Objective and brief summary of the project:

The objective of the project is to improve the competencies of innovation policy makers in designing, running, reforming, and monitoring effective innovation policies and institutions that make measurable contributions towards long-term economic development and sustainable development. The project will build on, complement and expand UNECE existing work in the area of innovation for sustainable development, including the intergovernmental policy dialogue on innovation for sustainable development; national Innovation for Sustainable Development Reviews, and subsequent support for policy makers in putting recommendations into practice and monitoring the results. The project has three key components. The first is a pilot innovation policy index to be applied to six countries. The project will develop a methodology capturing the current state, strengths and weaknesses of innovation policies and allowing for policy learning in the different dimensions of innovation policy making, without producing an aggregate rating of the participating countries. The methodology will be tailored to the specificities of the region as they have emerged from UNECE existing analytical work. The resulting data _and analysis will be turned into a publication which will also have a range of analytical chapters that examine the results through a wider analytical and regional perspective. The second part of the project consists of national innovation for sustainable development reviews, using an updated methodology aligned with the SDGs and the index, and examining the innovation system, i.e. the policies, institutions, actors and interrelations that enable innovation, of three countries in detail. The third part consists of sub-regional and national capacity-building activities which will then help beneficiaries to undertake relevant reforms to improve performance in a measurable fashion. The project will be overseen by the UNECE inter-governmental Team of Specialists on Innovation and Competitiveness Policies and the_Committee on Innovation, Competitiveness and Public-Private Partnerships.