Innovation Policy

Innovation, its development and promotion is an essential direction of the Lithuanian economy, a guarantee for competitiveness and welfare growth of the country.

Ministry of Economy and Innovation has prepared the Lithuanian Innovation Development Programme 2014-2020, The programme has four objectives:

• To develop innovative society by developing new knowledge and its application.
• To enhance innovation potential of business.
• To promote the cooperation creation of value networking, development and internationalization.
• To increase efficiency of innovation policy-making and implementation and promote innovation in the public sector.

This programme is linked to Smart specialisation as measures covered by the action plan of the programme will facilitate in promoting the established specific priorities of the smart specialisation area stimulating the competitiveness of the economy of Lithuania.

Main R&I policy developments:

In order to boost Lithuanian innovation capacity as it was recommended in various reports performed by the OECD, EU Commission and other international organizations, the Ministry of the Economy and Innovation has started to implement the Innovation reform. The Innovation reform consists of 3 main pillars:

• Revision of innovation system;
• Revision of innovation support system;
• Attraction of R&D orientated FDI;

The core of this reform is to identify and strengthen the importance of experimental development in the innovation process. It is strategically important to cover full innovation cycle and we are shifting the focus towards efficiency of the innovation activities. We aim to strengthen impact of R&D performed by STI to the state economy and to consolidate the innovation system.

The development, approval and initial implementation of the new R&I policy support measures under the Operational Programme (OP) 2014-2020 thematic objective 1, aimed at implementing the Lithuanian Smart Specialisation Strategy.