Some countries and regions in Europe are embracing a new form of "discovery-oriented" industrial and innovation policies, characterized by open discovery processes that involve extended collaboration between public authorities and external stakeholders. Based on an earlier publication, this presentation characterizes this new kind of industrial policy and questions whether it could be implemented in Portugal.
The policy involves two types of collaborative "discovery". First, "problem-discovery" which involves the process of moving from global directives to specific challenge-led or mission agendas, resulting in the definition of transformational goals that serve as an intermediary layer for concrete action roadmaps. Second, "system-discovery" which focuses on understanding and sensing the socio-technical system object of change, identifying key actors and existing efforts in the territory aligned with the defined agenda. These processes also involve identifying barriers to change, and creation of platforms that enable diverse stakeholders to collaborate, define shared goals, and develop actions with transformative potential. Public and private participants in these collective participatory industrial policies are driven by the need to break away from the traditional top-down policy planning and control of implementation policy-making paradigm.
Discovery-oriented industrial policies: could they be adopted in Portugal?
