Gothenburg U-GOT KIES Workshop: Changing Science & Innovation Policy

We do so through interventions by three distinguished professors – Susanna Fellman; Magnus Gulbrandsen and Uwe Canter - who will take about changing science & innovation policy in, respectively, Sweden, Norway & Germany. All three are professors in economics - social science, who are also actively involved in organizations and in discussions about policy in their respective countries. Their interventions include their reflections and insights related to ongoing changes in science & innovation policy in three countries – Sweden, Norway & Germany – with some comparison internationally.

Changing science & innovation policy is an important discourse in society – where change is associated with debates both nationally and internationally about how, why, what that universities (and other public research organisations) should change.

The workshop is structured around 3 interventions in a round-table setting, Hence, the purpose is to stimulate better understanding and reflections of what is changing in science & innovation policy in Europe – including how that may change future career paths and priorities for future research.

Governments support research and universities, as a means to stimulate common goods and public goods in the long term, which will benefit everyone in society. As been well-researched by the researchers attending & also ones affiliated with our centre, governments increasingly stimulate not only research and teaching but also interventions for business innovation and social entrepreneurship.

Many things are currently changing, which affect research and innovation. For example, the tasks assigned to the universities by policy-makers and by universities themselves have thus changed and expanded during recent decades. At the same time, several countries face crisis related to higher education – such as reducing budgets and new priorities in Denmark; introducing tuition fees in Norway; questioning the role of universities alongside a certain break-down of the model of using foreign students to subsidize other activities in the university in the UK.