The Content, Context and Future of STI-Policy: Towards a New Framing?

The world seems to get more complex and unpredictable. Yet universal values as they are share by the UN Sustainable Development Goals sketch a direction for policy making and for a better life for all. In the context of European STI policy making, the question is: What will be Europe’s role in the world and can European STI-policy making make a difference?

Looking at the future, the junction of the SDGs with megatrends provides a framework for identifying key transitions for the future, and challenges and opportunities associated with such transitions. Presently we seem to enter a new era of innovation policy that is directed toward transformative change, overcoming the old paradigms of "growth" and "competitiveness". Using this new framework, our paper covers future scenarios (2030) from a European project on “Beyond the Horizon”.

Looking at the transitions towards the SDGs the following general observations can be made:

• Inclusiveness and fairness are key principles of transition processes and key objectives of transitions.
• Coordinated action between European, national and regional level is essential
• There are strong interconnections between the scenario areas.
• Governance is key for innovation and value creation.
• The city emerges as a key level of governance and social and economic organization.
• Experimentation, rapid prototyping and testing solutions need to become an important part of policy

The aim of developing these scenarios is to explore strategic options for Europe in a world where there are major shifts in political and economic structures taking place. The key perspective underpinning the scenario approach is that the EU has the potential to magnify the importance of its citizens and its Member States in the world, while, as economic globalization advances, the global weight of the EU decreases. The EU will be a smaller part of the world economy, population, emissions and so on.