Rising, shining and sinking is part of the economic dynamics of countries, regions, sectors, ecosystems and, of course, organizations. At all these levels, timely innovations will have to be realized in order to be competitive as an economy, be relevant and contribute to solving the societal challenges we face. Innovation (and broader long-term adaptability) requires a good balance between exploration – finding entirely new solutive directions – and exploitation – converting knowledge and skills into activity, applications that work and, last but not least, their scaling-up.

With our research, we would like to contribute to the elimination of two misconceptions of innovation. First, innovation is often predominantly thought of as technological innovation, preferably stemming from the genius of individuals or individual organizations. Practice shows that innovation also requires organizational innovation (as well as innovations by pu-blic organizations) and flourishes pre-eminently in open and semi-open innovation environments where diverse parties are able to achieve productive cooperation focused on innovation. Public policy focused on innovation (and broader research, innovation and by extension often entrepreneurship) thus requires not only policy focused on the individual researcher, entrepreneur or organization, but is increasingly focused on establishing the ne-cessary collaboration for that innovation and adaptability. A second misconception is that innovation is primarily a matter for companies. This is by no means the case. Innovation in itself and its application and effect in all kinds of social domains also requires an innovative government that can help shape the conditions for, and realization and application of, inno-vation and create public-private environments in which knowledge exchange and innovation can flourish. Since its inception, Dialogic has contributed to the innovative capacity of the Netherlands through a variety of studies and advice.

• Evaluations of innovation policies
  The Dutch government has a broad array of innovation instruments at its disposal. Dialogic has an extensive track record with the evaluation of innovation schemes such as WBSO, PPP allowance scheme and Invest-NL, as well as multiple policy programs such as the Top Sector Policy, Space Policy or the Smart Industry Program. The evaluation of such policy packages requires a different way of evaluation. With SEO, Dialogic worked on a new evaluation stan-dard (Dare to learn, continue to measure)
• Exploratory studies
  Dialogic also helps numerous clients with forward-looking analyses in very different domains. For example, we supported the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment with system analyses to make aviation more sustainable. We worked together with KplusV on the strategy definition for Brainport Development and we support the municipality of Almere with the development of its own higher education infrastructure with its own signature in the field of sustainability and circularity
• Policy support and advice
  Based on its track record, Dialogic is also well positioned to directly support policy makers on innovation issues. For example, we supported the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in an analysis of research and innovation ecosys-tems for the Growth Strategy, we supported the (conditionally granted) Growth Fund application for self-thinking molecular systems, we analyzed the effects of the Corona crisis on R&D (expenditures) for the TNO Board of Directors, and we developed a policy assessment framework for the Province of South Holland/Innovation Quarter and MRDH for their invest-ments in field labs.