Work on innovation and technology policy aims to help Members harness technological change to boost economic growth and achieve other social objectives. It focuses on policies in support of private-sector innovation: financing R&D and education; using intellectual property rights and competition policy to create innovation-friendly environments; and fostering links between science and industry.

Management of public research, including R&D in higher education, is an key area of OECD analyses. Work focuses on: priority setting and funding of public research and questions relating to development of human resources for the knowledge economy, including innovation in the education system. Enhancing international co-operation in selected scientific areas is the goal of the Global Science Forum.

The OECD leads in the production of R&D statistics and indicators, methodological guidelines and databases. Its pioneering work in this area covers a broad range of S&T indicators (innovation, patents, skills, diffusion of ICTs, globalisation of R&D) and a scoreboard to benchmark developments in the knowledge economy. Development of indicators increasingly involves co-operation with non-Members.

The work of the OECD on biotechnology focuses on four broad fields: applications to human health; applications to sustainable development; applications to the knowledge-based economy (science and technology infrastructure, and particularly biological resource centres; intellectual property rights and licensing; stakeholder involvement; statistics); biotechnology statistics.