Measuring the impact of policies remains a challenge. Ideally, policy-makers would like to have real-time clear evidence on the direct impact of their choice. Instead, the effects of a policy are often delayed in time; the ultimate impact is affected by a multitude of factors in addition to the policy. Timely and robust evaluation remains an unsolvable puzzle.
This is particularly true for research and innovation policy, where the results from investment are naturally expected at years of distance. As Kuhlmann and Meyer-Krahmer (1994) puts it, “the results of evaluations necessarily arrive too late to be incorporated into the policy-making process”.