What If You Can't Measure What Matters? Public Value Mapping of Science and Innovation

Science and innovation policies are typically justified in terms of a broad range of public values (environmental quality, human health, national security, a skilled workforce, etc.). Yet when it comes to evaluating R&D activities, the assessment approaches generally focus on scientific productivity and economic activity, because they can more easily be measured than public values. As a result, however, science and innovation policy assessments, and decisions based on those assessments, focus on, and run the danger of optimizing, attributes of the research enterprise that don't actually address the public purpose of the R&D. Public Value Mapping offers an alternative, outcomes-oriented, non-economic approach to assessing the effectiveness of science and innovation policies. Featuring Dan Sarewitz, Co-director, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes.