Transformative Innovation Policy and Sustainable Development: Identifying Elements and Gaps in Environmental Institutions in Colombia

Introduction.In Latin America and Colombia, progress towards sustainable development has not kept pace with regional disparities and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through policies and actions has become a social, economic, and political challenge that demands a disruptive and holistic approach. The Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) has emerged as a new way to address these problems. This co-creation proposal, along with the participation and co-responsibility of all those involved, allows solutions to be reached and agreed upon from an interdisciplinary and difference-based approach. Objective. This study aims to identify, in a set of environmental institutions, elements of the TIP, as well as gaps in their innovation management processes to propose improvement actions for this type of organizations. Materials and methods. For such purpose the methodology implemented in this study, we compared the information contained in the documents published by the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) with data collected from four Colombian environmental institutions working toward sustainable development: information from primary sources (stakeholder semi-structured interviews) was compared with that from secondary sources (transformative innovation policies, the Green Book 2030, and local development plans) to assess whether the selected institutions apply such transformative elements. Results. Some of the most relevant findings include the identification of certain transformative elements in the institutions under analysis. Conclusions. Some of existing processes that could be strengthened in order to create a shared vision of sustainable development among all actors in a given region; a vision that, with the help of such environmental institutions and through learning, experimentation, directionality, participation, interdisciplinarity, anticipation of outcomes and effects, and inclusion, leads to the achievement of the SDGs.