The national innovation system is an extensive entity comprising the producers and users of new information and knowledge and know-how and the various ways in which they interact. At the core of the innovation system are education, research and product development, and knowledge-intensive business and industry. Varied international cooperation is a feature running through the system.
The producers of new knowledge include universities and polytechnics, research institutes and business enterprises. The users are mostly enterprises, private citizens, and decision-makers and authorities responsible for societal and economic development. The role of scientific information in societal and economic development has been constantly growing, which increases the significance of cooperation and networking both between the public and private sectors and within the sectors.
A key task for science, technology and innovation policies is to ensure a balanced development of the innovation system and strengthening cooperation within it. Alongside this, increasingly important are also cooperation relationships with other sectors, such as economic, industrial, labour, environmental and regional policies or social welfare and health care services. The prerequisites for knowledge-based development are created within different policy sectors.
In Finland the formulation of national science, technology and innovation policies has been assigned to an expert body, the Science and Technology Council, which is chaired by the Prime Minister. The foremost organisations responsible for science and technology policies are the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The Ministry of Education handles matters relating to education and training, science policy, universities and polytechnics, and the Academy of Finland. The Ministry of Trade and Industry is in charge of matters pertaining to industrial and technology policies, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes), and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Nearly 80 per cent of the government R&D funding is channelled through these two ministries.
The strategic aim for Finland is to secure sustainable and balanced social and economic development. Achieving this aim entails a high employment rate, high productivity and good international competitiveness. The role of the Science and Technology Policy Council is to contribute to the realisation of the strategy by means of science, technology and innovation polices and partly through education policy.
The innovation system approach has also been gaining importance within regional development. The network of Finnish universities and polytechnics, technology centres, the Centre of Expertise Programme, and other operations has developed innovation prerequisites in the regions to the extent that it is now possible to speak of the innovation systems of the regions and their development.