Advice: Shaping the future – a guideline for transformative policy
Complex societal challenges require innovative solutions and fundamental changes in our way of living and working. With well-coordinated combinations of policy instruments, the government can bring about the necessary social changes. In “Shaping the future – a guideline for transformative policy”, the AWTI advises on elements of a clear and coherent transformative policy mix and associated governance. The advice also contains a step-by-step plan and tool for policymakers to get started with shaping transformative policy. This guideline is the follow-up to the advice “Shaping the future – From optimization to transformation” issued in 2023.
Governance
The AWTI guideline shows that an effective transformative policy mix is inspired by a future vision based on clear choices. The combination of policy instruments fits the phase of a transformation in terms of timing, drives new movements and actively slows down old systems, relates to all relevant government policy and involves a broad group of organisations and people from practice.
The guideline introduces a governance to develop a transformative policy mix ‘learning by doing’ and in close interaction with practice, facilitated by transformation teams. Coordination and cooperation between different policy levels and policy domains is essential in this respect and the guideline outlines a number of possibilities for this.
Mirjam van Praag, AWTI-Chair:
To help transformations move forward, combinations of policy instruments are needed that are well-tuned to the phase of the transformation and the challenges that arise. The guideline offers policymakers a way to not only better understand transformations, but also to direct and accelerate them in a targeted and structured manner.
A step-by-step plan for an effective transformative policy mix
The guideline offers a step-by-step plan to develop an effective transformative policy mix. This step-by-step plan is in line with the Policy Compass of the national government and uses the TransMission model (Simons et al, 2023) as a tool for identifying bottlenecks and success factors in a transformation. Part of the step-by-step plan is a policy matrix that provides insight into which policy instruments are needed in which phase of the transformation to address the identified bottlenecks and success factors.
The AWTI presents the guideline as an invitation to policymakers and others to get started with transformative policy. This fits with the change that is taking place in thinking about how innovation policy can contribute to a future-proof and sustainable society and economy. This recent development in policy is certainly not crystallised. The practical experiences with this guideline will provide additional insights and thus help to further improve a transformative policy approach. Monitoring and evaluation of the experiences with the guideline is essential for this.
Cases
Every transformation is different. To inspire and illustrate what how the transformative policy matrix can support policymaking, the AWTI provides two casestudies. These casestudies are available in Dutch only.