Rinnooy Kan about innovation

The president of the Dutch Social-Economic Council, Rinnnooy Kan, made on Dutch television a strong case for more investments into knowledge & innovation (12 billion Euro per year, half private and half public). To see the original TV-show, click the link.

It sounds like an often used policy measure: when there is a (perceived) problem in a public sector, the solution often contains the increase of public spending on that domain. When there are problems in the health care system, or the education system regarding the quality a lot of pressure is put on politicians to increase the budget. Why an increase in budget will solve the (perceived) problem remains unclear. Also in the case of innovation: the case is often made that to remain innovative and competitive in the knowledge society, we need to increase our investments in innovation and knowledge. The 'Lisbon strategy' and also the new 'Innovation Union' both aim at an EU average investments of 3 % of GDP in R&D. Why in general a target is set for investments and not for results is unclear to me, and furthermore why there is such a strong perceived correlation between R&D and innovation performance is also unclear to me. In stead of analysing what are the problems in the National Innovation System and trying to solve these problems, the problem is tackled by throwing more money into the system. When taking into account that innovation often thrives in an environment of scarcity, the increase of public spending might even have an contrary effect. One danger could be that we copy the Swedish example in being a leader in investments in R&D, without this resulting in growth in number of jobs (link, pdf; link2, pdf) or increase of GDP (link, pdf).