This article overviews the past Science and Technology Basic Plans and foresees what should be taken into consideration as a framework for the next plan. The challenges left by the past plans include system-level reforms of the public research sectors, demand-side policies such as start-up grants and public procurement, cross-sectoral human resource exchanges and development policies, and sharing the policy-related information among various stakeholders. The 6th plan needs to include improvement of the quality of management in order to increase the productivity, as Japan's research capabilities are predicted to decline in a decade. Also to be included in the 6th plan are new innovation policies that transform social system with making governance more agile and moving to the use of social experiments with monitoring policies.
