On Tuesday, August 11, the information report reviewed by the Cabinet provided for Latvia’s participation in the project of the international Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It will explore today’s most successful innovation management approaches and prepare them for introduction into the national practice, including in Latvia.
“Innovation development is one of the priorities of the country’s economy, which will ensure Latvia’s faster economic and productivity growth. It is therefore important to anticipate the future development of Latvia’s most competitive industries in good time and to implement current, practice-tested approaches. We will develop future scenarios for the most competitive sectors in the Latvian-OECD cooperation project, so that in future, by reducing the risks of just responding to new conditions in the world, we can take proactive action in line with them,” emphasises the Minister of Economics Jānis Vitenbergs.
Latvia and the OECD will explore in the bilateral project how Latvia’s most competitive industries will develop in the future and develop their future scenarios. At the same time, in cooperation with Latvia and 12 other countries, the OECD will compile a state-of-the-art management practice for the most successful innovations, providing an opportunity for Latvia to plan forward-looking innovation development. This will contribute to the transformation of the national economy to the production of higher value-added products, productivity and more efficient use of resources.
The project is intended to analyse not only the development factors at national level but also the state of Latvia’s competitiveness in Europe and the world in order to timely identify the necessary improvements in regulatory framework and effectively plan state investments in the field of innovation. As a result, future scenarios will provide information on the impact of global development trends and other factors on the most competitive sectors of the country for the qualitative implementation of Latvia’s Smart Specialisation Strategy or RIS3.
The activities envisaged in the project have been recognised as necessary and have been scheduled since 2016, when the CM Regulations for the EU Funds Technology Transfer Programme administered by the Latvian Investment and Development Agency were approved. The OECD has proposed to Latvia to implement them in the form of a cooperation project in 2020-2022. The implementation of an active cooperation project therefore starts with this information report.
The planned bilateral project between the OECD and Latvia is one of the projects of the OECD’s Anticipatory Innovation Governance programme, such projects are carried out in another 12 countries. This programme develops and tests existing Member States’ approaches to innovation management, and studies are carried out together with policymakers.