Industrial Policy Handbook

1. Part I: Designing Industrial Strategies

Phase 1: Set the strategic orientation

Checklist

 A comprehensive evidence-based diagnosis of the economy or sector.

 Consensus within and beyond government.

 Include clear and measurable objectives in the strategy.

Actions

• Identify appropriate data sources for diagnosing an economy and/or a given sector to build a robust understanding of structural strengths and weaknesses (along with market failures, which help identify the most appropriate interventions, as discussed in detail in Part II). In some cases, governments choose to draw on the expertise of data specialists, the private sector, or dedicated consultation bodies to enrich and inform the industrial strategy and associated policy instruments (e.g. enabling further evaluation of costs and benefits, trade-offs and limitations of proposed instruments, or unintended side effects).

• An industrial strategy can benefit from consensus-building activities across ministries in the design phase, as cross‑government engagement can support coherence and reduce fragmentation.

• Engagement with the business community can be valuable for grounding the strategy in practical realities. At the same time, governments may wish to consider safeguards to avoid undue influence by any single group or interest.

• Citizen engagement can, where feasible, contribute to a broader sense of legitimacy and buy‑in. However, reaching this stakeholder group may be challenging, and governments often explore different approaches depending on capacity and context.

• Governments may reflect on how the format and timing of stakeholder consultations influence outcomes. For example, online consultations can be cost‑effective but resource‑intensive to process, while in‑person consultations can accelerate consensus‑building but may be less inclusive.

• Formalising the diagnosis and the industrial strategy, whether through a single document, a suite of documents, or an online platform, can help articulate long‑term priorities. Ideally, the chosen format is publicly accessible, endorsed by a legitimate authority, outlines long‑term goals for the business sector, and describes the policy mix to achieve them.

• Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic and Time‑bound) objectives to support the monitoring of the industrial strategy’s implementation. Such objectives can help strengthen clarity and accountability for government and implementing agencies. Access to high‑quality data and defining how the evaluation will be done can facilitate more effective monitoring.

Peer Examples

Many OECD countries have articulated their industrial strategies through one or more formal policy documents. Examples include Future Made in Australia, Austria’s Industrial Strategy 2035, Belgium’s Make 2025–2030, Colombia’s Política de Reindustrialización (2023), Czechia’s Economic Strategy: Country for the Future 2.0, Denmark’s National Defence Industrial Strategy, Estonia’s Research and Development, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Strategy 2021–2035, Finland’s Sustainable Growth Programme, Ireland’s White Paper on Enterprise 2022–2030, Italy’s Made in Italy 2030, Mexico’s Plan México: Estrategia de Desarrollo Económico Equitativo y Sostenible para la Prosperidad Compartida, Slovenia’s Industrial Policy Strategy 2021–2030, Türkiye’s 2030 Industry and Technology Strategy, and the United Kingdom’s Modern Industrial Strategy. These frameworks vary in scope, governance arrangements, and level of detail, but generally aim to provide an articulation of policy priorities and directions (further details in the Supporting Material).

In addition to economy-wide frameworks, several countries have developed sector-specific strategies to address particular national priorities, structural challenges or emerging opportunities. Examples include Chile’s National Lithium Strategy, Costa Rica’s Roadmap for Strengthening the Semiconductor Ecosystem, and Norway’s Green Industrial Initiative.

Many countries emphasise the diagnostic phase as a foundation for setting strategic orientation. For example, Italy has undertaken a detailed mapping of its industrial structure, identifying supply chains and production systems across multiple districts, with elements of this analysis reflected in its strategic framework. Similarly, the United Kingdom’s strategy, published in June 2025, was preceded by the publication of a diagnostic and consultation document in November 2024 (further details in the Supporting Material). Ireland has adopted a comparable approach, providing diagnostic analysis in a separate accompanying document, while Estonia and Slovenia include diagnostic elements within annexes to their respective strategies.

Countries use the outputs from the diagnostic phase to set objectives. Türkiye’s 2030 Industry and Technology Strategy translates the diagnostic into measurable and timebound targets for indicators such as national R&D expenditure, high-technology exports and the expansion of the digital talent pool. Mexico, for example, set a target to raise investment, public and private, by 25% over the strategy period (further details in the Supporting Material). Czechia aims to increase its share of high value-added exports and diversify beyond EU markets.

Countries have also adopted different approaches to stakeholder engagement across the design phases. In Estonia, for example, stakeholder engagement processes aimed to reach consensus; these are outlined in an Supporting Material to the strategy. Ireland references stakeholder engagement within its strategy, while the United Kingdom has established an Industrial Strategy Advisory Council (ISAC) as a mechanism for ongoing input. The Council brings together representatives from business, academia, trade unions, and local government, and provides advice to support stakeholder engagement, evidence-informed decision making, and monitoring and evaluation over time.

Phase 2: Coordinate across the economy and sectors

Checklist

 Select industrial policy instruments (see Part II of the Handbook).

 Ensure that the industrial strategies and industrial policy instruments align with existing national strategies.

 Establish formal coordination mechanisms between ministries and agencies.

Actions

• Situating the industrial strategy within existing regulatory frameworks in the design phase helps create policy coherence and can signal any conflicts and risks to determine if existing frameworks need to be changed or removed. Some countries illustrate their commitment to coherence by explicitly citing relevant strategies in the document itself, when they exist.

• Governments may facilitate implementation of an industrial strategy across institutions by determining coordinating roles, either through existing bodies, or organising regular cross‑government roundtables focused on specific issues with relevant bodies.

• Where it entails public spending, ensuring consistent and stable funding helps an industrial strategy reaches its objectives. Avoiding an overly long list of instruments that aims to satisfy all different formats, technologies and industries in the business sector will keep potentially limited resources from being stretched too thin. Budget processes can help safeguard against this.

• Establishing a clear lead for the industrial strategy. In many countries, this role is assumed by the ministry responsible for the economy (whose portfolio may also include areas such as trade, labour, energy or digitalisation). Some governments also appoint a dedicated minister or junior minister for industry to provide additional supervision of the strategy. Others place the strategy under the Prime Minister’s or Cabinet office.

• Engaging in strategic dialogue with professional agencies that deliver funding or services to beneficiaries can provide operational feedback and evidence to inform strategic adjustments to align ministerial decision-making with operational activities. Most countries continue to preserve vertical lines of authority.

• Align national, regional and supranational strategies as appropriate and where possible. Where regional or local authorities design and implement related policies, and where supranational frameworks (e.g. the European Union) shape funding or regulatory conditions, governments may establish coordination arrangements to ensure coherence, reduce duplication and avoid inefficient allocation of public resources.

• Adapt coordination arrangements to the scope of interventions. Broader, cross-cutting industrial strategies typically require cooperation among a wider range of institutions, whereas more targeted interventions can often be managed by a smaller set of actors. The ambition and breadth of the strategy may therefore influence the intensity and form of coordination mechanisms.

Peer Examples

OECD members employ different methods to coordinate industrial strategies horizontally and vertically. In Costa Rica, horizontal coordination across policy frameworks is reflected in two initiatives: the Roadmap for Strengthening the Semiconductor Ecosystem explicitly aligns its objectives with existing national strategies in education to work across ministries on skills development; while the Le Dejamos Trabajar regulatory simplification initiative brings together economic ministries, public service bodies and sectoral stakeholders to identify and remove administrative bottlenecks for business (further details in the Supporting Material).

Horizontal coordination of industrial strategies can be supported by regular interministerial dialogue, facilitated either through standing bodies—such as France’s General Secretariat of the Government as part of the Prime Minister’s office or Slovenia’s Strategic Council—or through temporary task forces established for specific policy purposes.

Vertically, ministries typically rely on agencies for implementation of industrial strategies within clear hierarchical frameworks. Austria and Estonia use formal contracts to set out the division of responsibilities; Slovenia regulates coordination at the instrument level through programmes of work; and Ireland’s annual Oversight and Performance Delivery Agreements link agency funding to strategic objectives and outputs. In some systems, agencies may also include partially private entities, such as Austria’s OeKB Group, which is owned by commercial banks but delivers services on behalf of the state.

In some cases, governments seek to align and coordinate funding with strategic priorities by consolidating support around a limited number of technology areas. For example, Türkiye’s HIT-30 High-Tech Incentive Programme brings together a range of incentives within a single framework targeting priority technology domains, helping concentrate resources and coordinate investment support.

Phase 3: Ensure effective delivery

Checklist

 Assign ownership and accountability for the implementation of the strategy.

 Ensure required resources and capabilities are available.

 Establish a reasonable timeline.

Actions

• Designate a lead to deliver a given instrument when multiple organisations are involved. When implementation spans several ministries or agencies, appointing a lead can support ownership and coordination. In many countries, responsibility rests within a dedicated unit within a ministry or with a specialised agency operating under a clear mandate that extends beyond political cycles, helping to ensure longer-term stability.

• Ensure adequate resources and capabilities to implement each policy instrument. Effective implementation depends on appropriate financial resources and skilled personnel. Governments may address capability gaps through training, internal mobility, secondments, or targeted recruitment to equip implementing bodies with the necessary expertise.

• Implementation of policy instruments in industrial strategy is easier when target groups and beneficiaries are aware of the policy. Lowering information barriers is one way to ensure firms are reached.

• Support from senior leadership can facilitate delivery. More broadly, developing “dynamic capabilities” in the public sector—the ability to monitor progress, learn from experience and adjust instruments when needed—can strengthen effectiveness.

• Align timelines with implementation realities. Feasible implementation schedules often benefit from early dialogue between implementing actors and recipients. Combining a long-term strategic perspective with realistic short-term milestones can help maintain momentum while ensuring credibility.

Peer Examples

Latvia tends to adopt more centralised institutional arrangements for the design and implementation of its industrial strategy, whereas Norway relies on a more decentralised governance model. In both cases, however, responsibilities are clearly delineated, and ownership is explicitly assigned.

Germany assigns responsibilities for its industrial and innovation strategy across clearly defined ministerial mandates, with the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) leading the overall implementation of the High-Tech Agenda Germany and line ministries such as the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) responsible for instruments within their remit. Coordination is supported by interministerial processes for technology road mapping and monitoring, complemented by regular expert advice to guide implementation and strategic adjustments (further details in the Supporting Material).

Latvia’s National Industrial Policy Guidelines 2021–2027 clarify institutional roles and establish a structured approach to cooperation between the Ministry of Economics and implementing agencies. Annual monitoring of progress enables authorities to assess developments, identify gaps, and make targeted adjustments—an approach often referred to domestically as a “reality check” (further details in the Supporting Material).

In Norway, responsibility for science, technology and innovation policy is shaped by the “sector principle”, under which each ministry formulates and implements science, technology and innovation measures within its own domain. This ensures clear ownership of policy instruments while requiring coordination when issues cut across ministerial boundaries.

Phase 4: Evaluate and adapt

Checklist

 Establish an evaluation plan for industrial strategy and policies.

 Put in place processes to learn from the evaluation and adapt industrial strategy and policies.

Actions

• Embedding an evaluation plan, such as clearly defined indicators, targets as well as counterfactuals, within a formalised industrial strategy enables governments to support evidence-informed policymaking and track progress systematically.

• Evaluations can use indicators of different forms: quantitative measures at the national level; econometric assessments of the causal impact of specific instruments on predefined outcomes; or qualitative feedback from beneficiaries and other stakeholders.

• Responsible entities may be tasked with collecting data and contributing to performance assessment. Higher-level bodies not involved in day-to-day management, however, may play a role in ensuring objective evaluation and strategic oversight.

• Dedicated resources, in addition to those allocated for implementation, to ensure robust data collection, rigorous analysis, and clear conclusions help ensure effective policy evaluation.

• Some countries establish internal evaluation teams to consolidate expertise and build institutional capacity. Training can be useful, not only for evaluation specialists, but also for civil servants more broadly, to strengthen their ability to interpret analytical findings and foster an institutional “evaluation culture”.

• Other countries rely on external providers for evaluation. Well-designed and competitive procurement processes can help secure high-quality, cost-effective evaluations. Such an approach may also require training for civil servants on drafting tenders, selecting providers, and assessing the quality of ex-post evaluations. Whether conducted internally or externally, ensuring the integrity and independence of the evaluation process is critical.

• Establishing formal processes to communicate evaluation findings to policymakers, and to draw lessons from them, supports continuous improvement of policy instruments and progress towards strategic objectives. For example, reviewing findings at the highest levels of government can help keep evidence central to decision-making, while publishing results can enhance transparency, stakeholder engagement, and shared understanding.

• Evaluation findings may lead to adjustments in implementation, the phase-out of specific policy instruments or programmes, or, in some cases, revisions to strategic objectives, coordination arrangements, or the overarching strategy itself. Introducing sunset clauses can make it easier to discontinue ineffective instruments. At the same time, governments should exercise caution in making frequent modifications as excessive changes can create instability and undermine credibility.

Peer Examples

OECD countries employ a variety of approaches to evaluating industrial strategies. France, for example, links each of its ten France 2030 targets to dedicated budgets, milestones and timelines, and reports progress through periodic public reviews (“bilans”). These reviews are complemented by a three‑year evaluation programme coordinated by the Comité de surveillance des investissements d’avenir, which commissions independent intermittent and ex‑post assessments. A first mid‑term evaluation was completed in 2023, with a second planned for 2026 to examine areas such as reindustrialisation, critical value chains and decarbonisation. Other countries involve high levels of government in the evaluation process. In Ireland, for instance, evaluation findings are submitted to the Cabinet Committee on the Economy and Investment as part of its oversight of the national strategy (further details in the Supporting Material).

Robust evaluation relies on strong data infrastructure. In Canada, the Business Innovation and Growth Support initiative provides an integrated system linking administrative and survey data for all Canadian firms, enabling more comprehensive performance and impact assessments of innovation and growth‑related programmes. The initiative, launched in 2018, continues to expand its data coverage and analytical capacity.

Evaluation outcomes may lead to adjustments to implementation, the discontinuation of specific measures, or revisions to strategic objectives and governance arrangements, as discussed further in Part II. Clear evaluation timetables—such as Ireland’s two‑year review cycle—help embed regular policy learning while maintaining stability.