The complexity of the science, technology and innovation issues and the difficulty of understanding innovation policies effects, on the one hand, and the low effectiveness or undesirable effects of many of the exiSTIng policies, on the other hand, highlights the need for more precision in the formulation and selection of each element of them. designing a new policy or reviewing and criticizing proposed or exiSTIng policies, needs a framework that specify the essential elements of these policies in order to allow the analysis of the proportionality between their elements. Accordingly, these article examines the essential elements of policy programs and provides a framework for developing these programs based on these elements. Finally, the application of the proposed framework in the criticizing of exiSTIng programs is shown by reviewing the Iran's Sixth Development Plan in the field of science and technology.

Policy making is a fundamental function of governments which is the intervention process in order to achieve results and realize the government’ s political vision. Accordingly, the study of public policy seeks describing and explaining the governments’ policy making and the way in which it is affected and changed. different frameworks and approaches have been introduced with the aim of explaining and prescribing in the field of public policy. The common point of these approaches is paying attention to the dynamics of actors, the contexts and their impact on policy making from prioritizing an issue in the policy environment to evaluatation and feedback on the policies implemented on that issue. Based on this, the field of science, technology and innovation as one of the most important public problems that directly affects society and its national competitiveness is always influenced by government interventions either directly or indirectly. In the field of science, technology and innovation policy, the concept of governance, due to addressing the roles and interactions of role-makers that lead to policy-making, has always been at the center of the policy-making process for researchers and policymakers. This paper, while analyzing the foundations and concepts of public policy and governance, highlights the implications of these two theoretical areas in the field of science, technology and innovation, and the case study of the ICT sector portrays one of the uses of these topics.

Despite its popularity among scholars, practitioners and policymakers, there is STIll no consensus around the term “ innovation ecosystem” and related concepts. Ecosystem approach, which focuses on relationships between innovation system players and their interdependence to co-create value, role of private sector and small firms, role of digital technologies, open innovation, and market forces and demand side of innovation, can provide a complementary approach to innovation system to help augment innovation systems. In this paper, different ecosystem approaches are introduced and innovation ecosystem components, ecosystem life cycle phases, and policies to strengthen innovation ecosystems are reviewed. Since ecosystem literature is more focused on firm strategies than government policies, there is STIll no comprehensive framework for innovation ecosystem policies, so in this paper different innovation ecosystem policies are reviewed. Innovation ecosystems’ success depends on multiple factors, and different innovation ecosystem policies were introduced in literature, including supporting ecosystem transition, supporting shared vision creation, supporting co-evolution, supporting geographic proximity, supporting platform creation, and supporting desired ecosystem properties. At the end, Iran’ s biopharmaceutical innovation ecosystem is introduced as a case study.

In the recent years, there have been a consensus formed over the new trends of innovation policy in the making which are more complex and extensive compared to neo-classic and evolutionary schools. This paper aims to review some of these trends in the context of STI policy theories, and more specifically, to focus on one of them which is set to bring forth new theoretical paradigm to meet environmental challenges. In a comparative studies, the common and diSTInct characteriSTIcs of the new paradigm are pointed out and then, the paper proceeds to explain its policy rationale, governance layers, actors and policy actions. And finally, it conducts the application of this framework on the case of study of water policy in Iran. The paper concludes the neoclassic and evolutionary paradigms designing STI policy with the aim of economic growth cannot be suitable for the framework by which the water policy analysis and the water policy needs the new paradigm of transition failure within which the directionality, demand, coordination and reflexive failure are the rationales for policy making.

In this article, some aspects of the relationship between social studies and policy making in science, technology and innovation (STI) are examined. STI have been the fields of study for social science and management researchers. The juncion point of these two is policy making. science, technology and innovation Policy making (STIP) as a part of puplic policy, needs to understand the meaning of science, technology and innovation in the social, economic, political and administrative inSTItutions of society. The use of cultural and historical information and understanding of socety in policy making is necessary because human societies are spatial and temporal. Not only the embedment of a particular policy in different societies has different conditions and consequences, but also in different times for the same society, based on historical experiences, the meaning of a particular science, technology and innovation may be different. In this way, for a society, the social aspects of STI is important, as well as the consequences of STIP. To summarize, it is necessary to study issues such as STI prioritizing, STI diffusion, relationship between STIP and democracy, and their ethical consequences for society. Prior to policy-making, these studies are needed for more intelligent policy making and then for evaluating outcomes and improving policies.

STI policies face many challenges in societies including ambiguities and uncertainties toward the future. To tackle with challenges, many instruments are developed. Roadmapping as one of these instruments initially is used as a planning tool at the firm level in technology development, but during the last years, national science, technology and innovation (STI) policy makers have become aware of the potential roadmapping offers for strategic technology and innovation management and begun applying it in the context of STI policy and priority setting in this context especially. Recently, to meet the need of STI policies, some of roadmap features have been strengthened, including: holiSTIc (attention to social issues and the social context of innovations and policies), alternative futures (use of different scenarios toward different perspectives), and participation and active learning. In this way, it has become a powerful instrument of STI policy. This paper introduces the roadmapping concept history, structure, and processes, and designing and implementing the STI policies, and finally, lists the STI's performance indicators.

The present age, known as the knowledge based economy, is facing rapid and growing changes in human knowledge and in various social, economic, industrial, political and technological fields. Facing such conditions requires the intelligence and active reaction of STI policymakers to future developments, technological advancements, and their longterm effects. Strategic policy intelligence (SPI) plays an effective role in creating awareness of STI policymakers through the, process, diffuse and protect information in order to make it available to the right person at the right time. SPI has not been considered in a coherent way as a scientific concept in the literature in Iran. In order to fill this gap, this paper seeks to study this concept and its tools. In this regard, strategic intelligence (SI) relation with policy is described from three perspectives of the window of opportunity, Clarity of purpose and legitimacy of policy evidence. Then important SPI tools as foresight, technology forcaSTIng, technology assessment and their application in various policy steps are explained. Finally, in order to emphasize the role of strategic intelligence in policy making, the Iranian case has been introduced.