Winning Back The Future: National Research & Innovation Centers to Foster Emerging Technologies

Driving innovation, focusing particularly on emerging technologies, should be an essential priority for governments to be in the driving seat of shaping their nations’ future. This is imperative to stay relevant at a time when the major tech corporations continue to show the way to win and set the expectations of the citizens. Government-sponsored National Research and Innovation Centers (NRICs) can play a central role in championing national agendas to foster emerging technologies and gradually evolve into R&D practitioner and orchestrator roles to address scale, focus or coordination gaps that characterize most countries’ approach to these technologies. To fulfill their mandate as innovation catalysts, NRICs must earn their position at the center of a broad community encompassing public sector, private sector and academic bodies, through mutually-beneficial strategic alliances and focused collaboration partnerships.