European Industrial Policy in the 21st century: in search of sustainability competitiveness and resilience. Some reflections
Tatiana Fernandez
Transformative innovation policy, transformative shared agendas, green and just transitions
Reflections for the panel "European Industrial Policy in the 21st century: in search of sustainability competitiveness and resilience", at the XXIX AIMS Conference
The world around us is undergoing dramatic transformations and, consequently, narratives and conceptual frameworks for industrial policy have changed. Today sustainability, competitiveness and resilience are seen as complementary and self-reinforcing objectives, and the best example for that is the European Green Deal.
New approaches, frameworks and concepts such as responsible research and innovation (RRI), transformative innovation policy, shared value, smart specialisation, missions or shared agendas are increasingly becoming mainstream and are influencing and changing our understanding of industrial policy.
In the last decade there has been a change in narratives, but when we look at policies at the territorial level not many things have changed: Many current policies and practices are still "working against" the sustainable development goals and don’t have the necessary holistic or systemic approach to address successfully the complex societal challenges we are facing.
We are in the middle of a change of paradigm and there is a lot of uncertainty combined with a huge resistance to change from public administrations, companies, academia, citizens… We live in a context where policy makers must to be aware of the limitations of their policies to tackle the problems that really matter to citizens and to society. Public administrations, companies, academia and civil society must engage in learning processes (through experimentation) about how to collaborate and work together in new ways to address societal challenges.
The need to address long-term grand challenges, like climate change, calls for changes in rules, regulations, technologies, practices, user preferences, infrastructure and cultural expectations, since all these factors together determine how the basic services of a modern society are produced and supplied. It also calls for massive and coordinated investments and policies (at global, European, national, regional and local levels) focused on transforming current systems through the generation of radical new alternatives to current practices (not focused on optimising current unsustainable socio-technical systems).
Therefore, a very important aim for governments implementing industrial policy should be working together with actors in the territory to engage in R&I driven shared agendas for sustainability transitions. Academia, governments, companies and civil society in the territory working together to develop a shared vision for their future and to define shared roadmaps to achieve it. Roadmaps to identify future needs and challenges and to develop the emerging technologies (such as green technologies or robots for ageing society) to address them.
These roadmaps and shared agendas should contribute to create credible expectations among companies around future public investments and about consumers’ preferences and demand. This is, shared agendas should generate the necessary certainty for privates to engage in transformative investments, since private investments always require certainty.
These shared agendas should also integrate that all transformative processes have their winners and their losers, and this is even more relevant for industrial policy, since many times industrial policy is about making choices between sectors, technologies of even individual firms, affecting territories, jobs and citizens. And governments must make these choices in a global and interconnected context, where multinationals, financial sector and lobbies have much more power than them.
How to manage conflicts and how to address social barriers towards industrial transition should be one of the main issues for industrial policy: universal minimal income is a necessary complement, as well as programmes for retraining and redeployment. Here the differences among rich and poor territories do matter a lot.
In the panel about industrial policy at the AIMS conference there was a debate about what should be the focus of industrial policy and about its connection to smart specialisation strategies. Should industrial policy focus on supporting specific industrial sectors and specialisation? Should it focus on skills? on capability domains? on emerging technologies? on value chains? or should it focus on addressing societal challenges? There was not a consensus on the answer, but all speakers seemed to agree that in order to address societal challenges, more holistic and systemic approaches for industrial policy are needed.
Científico Superior de la Defensa
4 年Thanks, Tatiana, for make me think. I believe, as well as you, Tatiana, that we are in the middle of a very turbulent and uncertain change of paradigm. And this is a big one, not only affecting parts of our society or our economy or lifestyle, but to many of the fundamental elements of the world we know. So, it is not a question of sectoral responses, a comprehensive approach that consider all the dimensions and their implications is required. The shared vision you mentioned, is clearly one of the specific requirements to design this global response. Regarding industrial policies and their connections with the S3 model, any new approach has to consider the lessons learnt from the last seven years and the achieved outcomes that we can already touch or foresee. In this sense, it has been already proved that it is not only a question of attracting all the potential agents for defining the strategies, but to keep them involved. It is not either a question of identifying the most competitive capacities or priorities but combining them with the appropriate funding and regulatory schemes. Finally, it is not a question of rethink a new model but to evaluate the one we are about to close.
Regional Development, Research and Innovation Policy
4 年Good insights Tatiana. I guess another way of looking at the same thing is to reflect on the relationship between crisis and strategy... If the strategy is not deeply grounded and shared, any crisis will "eat" it, wiping out all the efforts and eroding the trust and capacity that, in turn, will be necessary to face the next crisis... If the strategy is "true to the territory", then a crisis will rightly and legitimately impose adjustments, but the "reason of the existence" of the strategy itself should remain stable...It will be interesting to conduct an international comparison in this sense...
Assistant Professor of Strategy
4 年Many thanks again for your inspiring reflections!