Government Funding Agencies

Many innovation enablers would not exist were it not for government support and funding. Some, such as those that conduct research or technology development activities and those that work in economically-challenged regions, rely on significant and ongoing support. But even innovation enablers that are largely self-financing, such as industry associations, may rely on government funding for specific initiatives.

While governments recognize the important role of innovation enablers, they are accountable to their citizens and must ensure that public funds are invested wisely. To ensure that their investments in innovation enablers provide the greatest possible value for their citizens, governments need to distinguish between innovation enablers that are effective and those that are not, and to promote improvements in innovation enabler effectiveness. And to be able to demonstrate the impact of their investments in innovation enablers to their constituencies, governments need access to evidence of innovation enabler impact.

Challenges

In the past it has been difficult for governments to decide which innovation enablers to support because there has been no general measure of innovation enabler performance. While in the private sector investors use financial metrics to assess the performance of firms before choosing where to invest, the lack of a general measure of innovation enabler performance means that governments have had to choose where to invest without being able to compare the performance of different organizations. To make investments in innovation enablers based on merit, governments need a general measure of innovation enabler performance.

Business people and citizens in general want governments to provide evidence of the impact of their investments in innovation. This is difficult to do because of time lags between investment and impact, spillover benefits that are hard to trace, and because should success be achieved, it may be hard to identify its causes.  Providing evidence of the link between investments in innovation enablers and the impact of those investments requires an approach that captures multiple types of impact that may occur at different points in time, and is able to distinguish between innovation enabler contributions to impact and those of other parties.

The Evidence Network's solution

The Evidence Network provides government funders of innovation enablers with measures for innovation enabler performance. This allows governments to compare alternative investments and create a level playing field on which innovation enablers compete for funds on the basis of merit. Governments can then fund the highest performing innovation enablers, just as private sector investors invest the most funds in the most profitable firms.

Our measures of innovation enabler performance also allow governments to monitor the degree to which innovation enablers are adding value over the lifetime of the government funding. Government funders can request annual reports of the performance of the innovation enablers in which they have invested, just as private shareholders receive annual reports from the firms in which they have invested.

Finally, we provide governments with evidence of the impact of their investments in innovation enablers that can be used to help citizens understand the importance of such investments.