The Art of Crafting Actionable National Innovation Policy: The Case of Sri Lanka

Innovation or S&T policy has become one of the crucial policy domains in almost all the countries during the last three decades. The association between the level of innovation and the socio-economic development of a country has created a considerable national level prominence to work on formulation and implementation of innovation policy which will direct to configure a national level innovation eco-system. This study examines the contribution of National S&T Policy of Sri Lanka published in 2008 together with analysis of the National Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy 2011-2015 presented in 2010 for making recommendations for effective designing and implementation of the innovation policy in the light of rationality model for policy. Document analysis, secondary data sources and in-depth interviews with key personalities were the methods applied to meet study purposes. The design effort of the Policy and the Strategy is appreciated as this was the first attempt in formulation a policy in innovation in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, incompatibilities that the two documents presented have created inconsistency of the goals and objectives. Loop holes in assigning strategic actions amongst relevant actors, lack of guidance for resource allocation, and ambiguity in coordination and communication are highlighted as weaknesses in these policy initiatives. Overall, it reveals that the gap between stipulated goals and objectives of the Policy and the level of attainment has been widening annually over 10 years of the policy formulation. Therefore, this study recommends that it necessitates the policy to be appropriately adjusted in order to meet with timely needs and crafting actionable strategies accordingly.