The Project
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A. TARGET Project Goal
The main goal of TARGET Project is to provide a Guide (referred to as the ‘ToolKit’) for policymakers who wish to formulate and implement Targeted R&D Policies. The ToolKit will enable a country or region to develop and to implement targeted policies successfully as well as to take concrete policy making decisions. It will contain a structured and valorised set of guidelines and recommendations for diversifying a country’s policy mix, taking into account the unique characters of its innovation/R&D system and geopolitical reality. In order to achieve the above goal, TARGET project will aim for the following objectives:
Main Objectives: 1) Indentifying the policy capabilities required in order to formulate successful targeted R&D policies;2) Analyzing the appropriate level of policy mix, especially in regard to the level of Targeted vs. Horizontal policies; and 3) Identifying coordination mechanisms between the different mix of policies within a targeted policy.
B. The Rational Behind TARGET Project
Due to radical changes in the global environment which manifested during the post 2000 period, it has been emphasized that countries need to re-define their proper mix of R&D policies (Avimelech and Teubal, 2008)[1]. These changes include: an ever-enhancing complexity of economic systems, at both local and global scales; the emergence of new technological areas resulting in enhanced turbulence, dynamism and radical uncertainty; and the rise of new, important players in Asia including: China, India and others. These changes expose business sectors to major threats on the one hand, while introducing them to various new opportunities on the other hand.
Policy makers face significant challenges in such terms and are required to target subsequent opportunities by enabling or promoting the business sector to take advantage of them. Existing horizontal R&D policies focused on promoting R&D activity in individual firms are often lacking in this respect. Thus, current and future scenarios require not only the design of new policies but also the adoption of a whole new type of policy process, namely ‘Targeted R&D’ (Teubal, 2008)[2]. While market failure justifies the use of horizontal R&D policies, both system failures and system imperfections require Targeted R&D policies in order to be solved. The central idea behind targeting is to leverage existing high quality market forces for the purpose of accomplishing the country’s strategic priorities.
C. Building a Knowledge-Base about Targeted R&D Policies
As mentioned, the main goal of the project is to produce a Toolkit for policymakers. In order to so, three distinctive phases of the project will be carried out. The first, Study of Successful Cases, will include, as its name indicates, the study of different cases that are recognized in the literature as successful implementations of targeted policies. In the second phase, The Study of Gaps, the research team will concentrate on the countries participating in the consortium and will study each country’s attempt at promoting biotechnology. This will enable the research team to contrast the successful cases with each country’s experience and to learn about possible gaps and barrier to implementation. After phase two, and based on the knowledge-base that was created thus far, the research team will be able to design the Toolkit. The third phase, Testing the Toolkit, will ensure that the toolkit is applicable enough. This phase will consist of policy exercises that use the Toolkit to formulate policy for Lithuania and Slovenia.
[1] Avimelech and Teubal “Evolutionary Targeting”, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2008
[2] M. Teubal, DIRECT PROMOTION OF ‘COMMERCIAL’ INNOVATION (CI) IN LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES (Ldcs): A SYSTEMS EVOLUTIONARY (S/E) PERSPECTIVE, paper presented to UNCTAD, 2008
