Abstract
While much attention is paid to innovation, many countries have difficulties in developing effective innovation policies. This paper critically reviews trends in innovation policy, principally based on OECD information. Acting as an international basis for policy studies, OECD has performed international surveys on national innovation systems and benchmarking of pioneering cases. Once being simply policy on R&D, the innovation policy has developed into coordination within individual areas and organizations, e. g. for human resources and, furthermore, it is on the track of a unified, coherent body of policies. While discussion has so far been focused on improvements of technology-push, linear type of policies, market-pull, nonlinear mechanisms and linkage with them should also be studied. Apart from these integration processes on a system level, problems on actors and contents need to be approached in an appropriate manner.
