This book re-examines the rationale for public policy, concluding that the prevailing 'public knowledge' model is evolving towards a networked or distributed model of knowledge production and use in which public and private institutions play complementary roles. It provides a set of tools and models to assess the impact of the new network model of funding and governance, and argues that governments need to adapt their funding and administrative priorities and procedures to support the emergence and healthy growth of research networks. The book goes on to explain that interdependencies and complementarities in the production and distribution of knowledge require a new and more contextual, flexible and complex approach to government funding, monitoring and assessment.
The chapters in this book issue a series of challenges to the next generation of science and technology policy. The need for new systems of governance in science and innovation make a single, all encompassing rationale for public funding unnecessary and irrelevant. The new policy questions that matter concern the means and mechanisms for intervention - the use of policy to harness, support and expand the interaction and dynamism of research networks composed of public and private actors.