POVERTY: out-dated innovation

Out-dated innovation policy is undermining opportunities for development, argues new report, which calls for a 'radical and urgent' change of approach
We need a "radical and urgent" new way of thinking if we want to meet the challenges of poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability, concludes a new manifesto published by the ESRC STEPS centre, based at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex.
Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A new manifesto, published yesterday, states that out-dated innovation policy is undermining opportunities for development.
"Meeting these interlinked global challenges of poverty reduction, social justice and environmental sustainability is the great moral and political imperative of our age. Science, technology and innovation of many kinds have essential roles to play in this. But along with many others, the STEPS centre believes that this imperative can only be fulfilled if there is a radical shift in how we think about and perform innovation," argues the document, published 40 years after the UN-commissioned "Sussex Manifesto", which called for science and technology to focus more on meeting the needs of developing countries.
The new manifesto, the result of 20 roundtable discussions with "colleagues, collaborators and critics" around the world, 13 background papers and a series of seminars, calls for a different way of thinking about how we use science and technology to improve lives.
What we need, the director of the centre, Melissa Leach, told the audience at the launch of the manifesto, is a new global politics of innovation.
"We have to move beyond business as usual; beyond the narrow view of science and technology," she said.
"The policy of innovation is not about being pro or anti-technology but about asking and addressing questions of choice. Which science? Which technology and whose innovation? And what kinds of change do we really want."
Researchers have called this the "3D agenda for innovation", which involves taking a closer look at what innovation is for (direction), who will benefit from it (distribution) and whether there are alternative ways of doing things (diversity).
As an example, researchers look to agriculture, where there are assumptions that problems of food supply and hunger can be solved with high-input industrial agricultural. The report argues that alternative, low-input solutions are effective and sufficient in many places but aren't valued in the same way because they don't serve powerful commercial and political interests.
"Our vision is a world where science and technology work more directly for social justice, poverty alleviation and the environment. We want the benefits of innovation to be widely shared, not captured by narrow, powerful interests. This means reorganising innovation in ways that involve diverse people and groups – going beyond the technical elites to harness the energy and ingenuity of users, workers, consumers, citizens, activists, farmers and small businesses," said Prof Andy Stirling, co-director of the STEPS centre.
The manifesto makes a number of recommendations, which include establishing national statutory bodies, which represent a wide range of views and interests and include citizen groups, to scrutinise investments in science and technology and report back to parliament; gearing science funding towards poverty alleviation and requiring public and private investors to increase transparency; and training "bridging professionals" who can connect research and development activities with business, social entrepreneurs and users.
The Sussex manifesto
Yesterday's launch comes 40 years after the publication of the "Sussex Manifesto", written by academics at IDS and the Science and Research Policy Unit at Sussex. The report was commissioned by the UN as part of its plan of action on science and technology for development for the "second UN development decade", the 1970s.
The document argued that science and technology was geared too much towards the interests of wealthier nations and called for research agendas to focus more on the needs of developing countries. It called for developed nations to devote 5% of expenditure on research and development to issues affecting developing countries. Controversially, it made the case for introducing quantitative targets.
The report was not liked by the UN and after some discussions was put to one side. The UN referred to it as a manifesto because it didn't read like an academic report.
"It [the UN] was unprepared for group of academics to propose targets. That was the role of politicians," said one of the report's authors, Prof Geoff Oldham, who attended yesterday's launch. "There was quite a furore over the report, in the UN and in several developing countries, especially India. We were pleased about the discussions and thought we had served a useful service."
Two years ago, following a seminar given by Prof Oldham on the impact of the report since it was published, the STEPS centre, which merges development studies with science and technology studies, decided to look again at the document and think about what sort of manifesto might be needed for today.
Alan Gillespie, chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), said the original Sussex Manifesto had far-reaching effects and said the UN had finally acknowledged the value of "tough targets" when it set the Millennium Development Goals in 2000.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/katine-chronicles-blog/2010/jun/16/sussex-manifesto-innovation-development