Innovation can bring benefits, but possible risks too. The emergence of nanotechnology, which manipulates barely visible materials for industrial purposes, is a case in point, and policymakers are taking a close look.

Anyone who doubts that policy can spur innovation should look at the Kyoto Protocol. After it was adopted in 1997, the number of patents for certain technologies used to mitigate climate change climbed worldwide. In fact, just six years later, the number of patents on wind technologies had grown more than five-fold, and those on solar photovoltaic and hydro/marine technologies had more than doubled. The number of new patents for other climate change mitigation technologies, such as carbon capture, biofuels and geothermal energy also rose, though at a rate that was not much faster than the increase for patents in general over the same period.

Why is innovation so important for growth and what can governments do to improve it? The OECD has been working on this question for several years and is delivering a comprehensive perspective, the OECD Innovation Strategy, to governments from around the world at the OECD Ministerial Council Meeting on 27-28 May. Here are some highlights.

Innovation is not just about new gadgets, but also about using old technologies in new and improved ways. Sails are a case in point, as SkySails GmbH & Co. KG explains.

On 7 April 2010, a light aircraft with an unusually wide wingspan took off from a small airfield in the Swiss canton of Vaud. During its one-and-a-half hour flight it reached an altitude of 1,200 metres and went through its paces of turns, approaches and landing. Unlike in the legend of Icarus, the sun did not melt this plane’s wings, but actually powered them. This was one of the world’s first solar-powered flights, and the OECD Observer caught up with one of the creators and pilots of the Solar Impulse HBSIA aircraft, Bertrand Piccard.

Innovation in organisation and management will be needed if sectors are to adjust to new, oil-challenged realities. Supply chains will evolve as a result, notably in transport.

If the transport sector is to make deep cuts in carbon emissions, the carbonintensity of travel must be reduced. For that, policy analysis has to be based on how world markets actually function, and that means understanding what consumers look for when deciding to buy a vehicle, and what drives manufacturers’ decisions too.

“The Red Arrow”, a poem by Paul Durcan, an Irish poet, opens with the line “In the history of transport–is there any other?” Anyone looking at innovation in transport would do well to consider this line. Is history really the history of transport, more than, say, the history of wars and kings, as some would have it? It is a tempting proposition.

Japan is widely regarded as a leading innovator on the environment. We asked Japan’s Parliamentary Secretary of the Environment, Nobumori Otani, who was in Paris in early May, for his insights.

The tax system can be a powerful policy instrument for spurring innovation. Here is how.

Companies and non-governmental organisations are forging new types of relationships. Do they really work for the benefit of both?

Managing local ecosystems can help create jobs and spur sustainable economic growth.

The Caisse des Dépôts, a publicly-led longterm investment group, which has entered a partnership with the OECD focusing on the role of long-term investors, has founded, together with three other European public financial institutions–Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, KfW Bankengruppe and the European Investment Bank–the Long-Term Investors Club. What is it all about?

Just like R&D, researchers are vulnerable to economic downturns. R&D in industry is closely linked to creating new products and production techniques and to a country’s innovation effort. In 2006, before the current recession hit the global economy, around 2.6 million researchers, or about 65% of all researchers, including those in the government and education sectors, were employed by businesses in the OECD area. However, whereas four out of five researchers work in businesses in the US and two out of three in Japan, only one out of two do so in the EU. Business researchers exceed 10 per 1,000 employees in Finland, Sweden, Japan and the US; they number six per 1,000 in France and Germany, and four per 1,000 in the UK. Mexico, Turkey, Poland and the Slovak Republic have fewer than one researcher per 1,000 employees in industry.

A jolt of innovation can be a powerful antidote to recession. But innovation risks being hit hard by the economic crisis as the capital to finance research and develop new products grows scarce. The economic fallout could be serious, since innovation is a key driver of growth.

Like Alice, the OECD appears to be bursting through to the other side of its looking glass. Change may be the order of the day, but as the organisation approaches 50, lessons from past work on innovation might speak to the current economic crisis.

The Centre for Educational Research and Innovation celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2008. Its future is still very much ahead of it.

The great 20th century sinologist, Joseph Needham, once drew up a list of 24 technical innovations brought from China to the West. They ranged from gunpowder and the wheelbarrow to printing, cast iron, the magnetic compass and the chain suspension bridge. By 1600 the torch of innovation had passed to the West.

Was the dot.com boom a fortuitous circumstance, or the fruit of brilliant minds? Was it the hardware or the software that spurred the IT revolution? And to what extent did government efforts to free up markets and provide enabling business and innovation environments play a role?

The history of human progress is also a history of innovation, and OECD countries have been rediscovering what this means for the global economy. Consider the US. For two decades the world’s largest and most advanced economy has been driving forward the frontiers of technical progress. Yet whether in information technology, pharmaceuticals or biotechnology, the US knows it must innovate to stay in front.