The TIPC Conference takes place in Pretoria from 19 to 21 September. Prof Mark Swilling is one of the panellists that will participate in various discussions on transformative innovation today. The TIPC initiative aims to analyse the current world in transition and to develop a new shared rationale and vision for innovation policy. The initiative seeks to engage in policy design and experimentation, training and skill formation, and will contribute to generating evidence that directly feeds into South Africa’s governance systems through evidence generated and lessons shared among participating countries.
According to Prof Johan Schot, the Consortium’s key objective is to examine and expand on current innovation frames and approaches to assist in solving urgent social and economic issues. Partners commit resource, time and expertise to the Consortium to enable joint resource and working to progress new innovation theories and practices with key deliverables and outcomes seeking to address the central issues of our time: climate change, inequality, employment and future growth. This is a challenge for both the Global North and the Global South. TIPC aims to shape and deliver a new innovation policy framework (termed Innovation Policy 3.0) alongside other associated ‘policy mixes’ in a transdisciplinary way. The Consortium will interface between the worlds of research, business, government, media and civil society. During the process all participants are positioned as active co-researchers and co-policy designers.
As part of this initiative, a number of workshops to develop case studies and share experiences from consortium countries have been scheduled. Consortium members include: Research Council of Norway, the South African National Research Foundation, the Colombian Administrative Department of Science, Technology & Innovation (Colciencias), the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA), the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation (Tekes) and the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex.