Closing Remarks I. OECD Response and Next Steps – Andrew Wyckoff (Director, STI, OECD) Green growth is a fascinating policy issue that is inter-generational and involves the entire planet. This Forum is timely as the OECD is currently thinking about its future work programme for 2017-2018. The world is indeed at a pivot point and it is time to move dramatically. That means radical innovations, but it also means trillions of incremental innovations. More work is also needed to consider non-technological innovations. The aim is to dramatically increase the efficiency of how we make things while reducing the need for transportation (e.g. 3D printing). Importantly, mainstream policy makers are beginning to realise that a bottom-up, micro-economic approach can play an important role in the macro-economic scene. Considerable work is being done on the bio-economy (i.e. reducing waste). One neglected area relates to oceans. The OECD Space Forum also shows that more can be done through earth observation to help us pinpoint interventions and reduce risks. We need to increase cooperation within science, technology and innovation. The Daejeon Declaration calls on the OECD to map basic R&D around the globe (i.e. who is doing what in basic fundamental research in which subject areas). That would help identify areas where countries could cooperate, places to avoid duplication and determine areas where research is lacking. It is necessary to employ differentiated innovation policies rather than fixating on only one aspect. It is also necessary to differentiate between start-up and legacy sectors (i.e. incumbents), which have completely different innovation needs (i.e. firm dynamics). As noted, non-technical innovations are another important area to consider. The InnoCentive website offers bounties for the resolution of R&D problems. It has been successful and shown that solutions often come from outside the original field of study. That points to the need for orthogonal thinking. In addition, the institutionalisation of intellectual property rights has occurred with specialised courts and legal firms established to specifically deal with these issues. To successfully diffuse technologies, this needs to be taken into consideration. Lastly is the issue of regulatory incumbency. So many regulations are influenced by the vested interests of incumbents (e.g. scientists, institutions, firms). The role of incumbency needs to be factored into policy making so that new entrants can benefit from regulations.
II. Q&A Sesssion Kumi Kitamori (OECD, Green Growth and Global Relations) inquired about intellectual property rights and the approach by Tesla of not filing patents. Does the OECD have a view on this issue? Andrew Wyckoff noted that the problem with intellectual property rights is that they have become mainstream and a framework condition like trade policy or labour policy. The focus often turns to patents – but there are other types of intellectual property (e.g. trademarks, design rights, or copyright). The UK Intellectual Property Office tried to value the stock of different types of intellectual property, and found that intellectual property was 6-times more valuable to the economy than patents alone. There is therefore a need to differentiate our policies. Companies such as Weta Digital (responsible for the Avatar animation) do not patent anything. On the contrary, they want their sophisticated software to increase users and build a community of skilled users. Other examples include companies such as LinkedIn or Tesla that have put close to $1 billion into an open artificial intelligence research centre. Simon Upton noted that we have spent the last 250 years mobilising vast amounts of material to create
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GGSD 2015