A consultancy contract has been signed (March 29, 2022) between the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and Charles Edquist. Under this contract, Charles will draft a chapter on innovation policy coordination and science, technology and innovation councils in Eastern Europe and South Caucasus (EESC). This chapter will be a part of the “UNECE Innovation Policy Outlook” to be published by UNECE during 2022.

The aim of the chapter by Charles will be to examine the current state of the art as well as challenges and opportunities for strengthening innovation policy coordination in the EESC countries. This means that the chapter will be partly based on previous experiences of different kinds of “Councils” (for innovation and research) and other modes of coordinating innovation policy instruments in countries outside the EESC region.

A previous example of a publication on innovation policy coordination by Charles is: Edquist, C. (May 2019). Towards a holistic innovation policy: Can the Swedish National Innovation Council (NIC) be a role model? Published in Research Policy, Volume 48, Issue 4. Download at  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.10.008 Alternative link here.

The EESC countries are: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldovia and Ukraine.