Addressing global sustainability challenges, such as climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requires changes in innovation policy. Hence, it is necessary to promote the development, deployment, and diffusion of innovative solutions in companies and policymaking. Companies need to develop and utilize new methods to meet the various objectives. Policymakers, hence, need to develop an innovation environment that stimulates companies to develop innovations with positive social and environmental impacts, in addition to economic outcomes. There are several challenges that policymakers face in this task. These challenges arise from new requirements for policymakers as their role widens as well as the tensions between traditional growth-oriented innovation policies and new sustainability-related goals.
The COSU project aims to support the creation of an innovation environment that promotes holistic sustainability. The project systematically reviews existing policy instruments and stakeholder experiences, which helps to identify and overcome the incoherencies (e.g. overlaps, gaps, conflicting aims) within existing innovation policies that hamper long-term sustainability goals. It helps create an innovation environment that encourages companies and research organizations for ambitious and impactful innovation collaboration for balanced sustainability between the social, environmental, economic objectives. The engagement of a wide range of stakeholders to co-create novel innovation policy solutions supports the dialogue between companies, policymakers, research organizations, educational institutes and funding bodies and strengthens the acceptability of new innovation policy approaches. In addition, we will provide guidelines on how sustainability-oriented innovation policy can be systematically implemented to facilitate a long-term path towards a sustainable economy in Finland.
Additional information:
Senior research scientist, head of unit Susanna Horn, firstname.lastname@syke.fi
Researcher Hanna Entsalo, firstname.lastname@syke.fi