Ciencia

Grupo de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad (CSIC)
Working Paper 00-04

Targeted research and technological innovation, and their relationships in a new socio-political context: Approaches to their evaluation

Emilio Muñoz* Unidad de Políticas Comparadas CSIC Madrid

* With the collaboration of Victor M. Díaz, Juan Espinosa de los Monteros and María J. Santesmases.
Paper prepared for theWorkshop on "Innovation and Diffusion in the Economy: The Strategy and Evaluation Perspectives", Lisbon. 24-25 January, 2000, organised by CISEP, (ISEG, Technical University of Lisbon)

INDEX

Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
Evaluation and its limits............................................................................................... 1 1. The general frame of reference. A European view ................................. 2 1.1 Procedures for the evaluation of programmes ...................................................... 4 1.2 The research and development (R&D) programmes. Their special traits ........... 5

2. A specific model to evaluate R&Dprogrammes................................. 6

3. Examples of Evaluation Exercises. Case Studies .................................... 9 3.1 National Programmes from the National R&D Plan...........................................10 3.1.1 The New Materials National Programme ................................................................10 a) Structural Characteristics..............................................................................11 b) Results (the operational functioning) .............................................................11 3.1.2 The National Programme on R&D on Pharmaceuticals .........................................12 a) Structural Characteristics ..............................................................................13 b)Results.............................................................................................................14 3.1.3
The National Health Programme ........................................................................15

a) Structural Characteristics ............................................................................16 b) Results...........................................................................................................163.2 The National Research Fund ("Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria", FIS).....18 3.2.1 The evaluation project.............................................................................................18 Results on the structure and function of FIS activities..................................................20

4. Some presumptive conclusions......................................................................21

References ..................................................................................................................22

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Introduction
Science and technology policy-making and the study of its effects on innovation are requiring a “more sophisticated understanding of the ways on which science and technology interact” (to quote, as an example, N. Rosenberg,Science and Public Policy, vol 18, number 6, pages 335-346, 1991).

The exploration of these relations has been and continues to be at the core of the models that, along the period initiated after the Second World War, have been used to promote and analyse the science and technology activities and their outcomes. The “science model” left pace to the “science push-market pull – R&D model”,inspired on linearity, a model that represented the technological change leading to innovation as closely dependent and based essentially on scientific results. More recently, after acknowledgement of the insufficiencies of the linear model, models have evolved considering that science and technology and innovation are part of a system, a “social” system, whose essential activity is learning and...