How composite indicators of innovation can influence technology policy decision?

This working paper is based on the development of the Thesis Plan presented for the Units Project II and Project III at the 1st Winter School of PhD programme on Technology Assessment at FCT/UNL. It focuses the methodology analysis and includes empirical information elements, in order to understand how composite indicators of innovation can influence technology policy decisions. In order to test the hypotheses raised in the Thesis Plan, two separate phases were designed. On the first part, the work tests hypotheses 1 and partially 2, identifying the quality, depth and limitations of three famous complex indicator-based systems, namely the Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard, the European Innovation Scoreboard 2008 and Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010. On the second phase, the remaining hypotheses are tested adding media databases analysis, which will provide complementary information to a set of interviews to policy makers, in order to understand the role of the composite indicators on technology decisions.