Stimulating innovation is a key task for achieving sustainable economic growth. However, recent developments have demonstrated that prevailing practices and institutions of innovation governance have come under pressure. This publication examines the sources of these pressures, and provides lessons on how governments adapt their governance practices to achieve better coherence and co-ordination of policies to promote innovation. The changes under way point to the emergence of a "third generation" of innovation policy: a broadly based, strategic policy area, crossing traditional ministerial boundaries. Companion volumes to this edition are: Governance of Innovation Systems: Volume 2: Case Studies in Innovation Policy Governance of Innovation Systems: Volume 3: Case Studies in Cross-Sectoral Policy