Issues in the evaluation of innovation and technology policy

The efforts by policymakers to help firms become more innovative have created a strong desire to know which policies work. This has placed high expectations upon evaluation. The development of evaluation in this sphere has mirrored the evolution of policy, beginning with a focus on large-scale collaborative technology programmes and gradually moving towards an examination of measures seeking to enhance the environment for innovation. Evaluations in this field may be divided into those assessing direct and indirect financial support for research and design and those addressing opportunity-enhancing innovation policies such as technology transfer networks. Several tensions and challenges for evaluation are identified, including the lack of comparative and systemic innovation policy evaluations. Evaluation needs to follow the same adaptive learning approach as innovation policy itself. © 1998 SAGE Publications.