Risks of policy failure in direct R&D support

In current socio-economic contexts characterised by high levels of uncertainty, the role of R&D policies to foster innovation becomes crucial. However, increased uncertainty exacerbates the risk of policy failure leading to ineffective R&D support. Despite this, R&D policy failure risk is rarely discussed in the literature. While innovation research acknowledges the existence of policy failure risks, their nature and the appropriate ways to address them are not analysed in an integrated manner. Drawing upon risk and risk governance concepts and public policy research, we present a conceptual framework for the analysis of R&D policy failure risks and their governance. • We present a conceptual framework built upon concepts from public policy and risk research to analyse R&D policy failure risks • We apply this framework to the analysis of risks of failure in the implementation of direct R&D support • We show that addressing risks of failure in R&D programmes implementation requires an integrative adaptive risk governance approach involving resilience-based coping strategies and systematic policy learning