Science and technology (S&T) capacity building requires a focus on institutions. Individuals, no matter how brilliant, cannot function without a fundamental framework for research, access to colleagues (including newly minted next-generation practitioners), and technology transfer.

Over the last century or so, the industrialized nations created a number of institutional mechanisms that together have evolved into a complex of mutual support for science and technology. Though their features may vary from country to country, they are generally of the following types:

• An educational system that promotes an appreciation of science and technology and a respect for rationality and the values of research;
• A system of universities and research centers;
• Independent academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine;
• Ministry or equivalent executive-branch structure for guiding decisionmaking on matters of S&T policy;
• Professional and other associations that serve the practitioners of various disciplines;
• Public funding mechanisms for promoting public-goods and fundamental research;
• Private-sector entities that are active in the promotion of new science and technology;
• Private funding mechanisms, such as foundations;
• Libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions that have archival responsibilities, as well as educational functions;
• Appropriate committees in the legislative branches of government for addressing S&T issues;
• Specialized journals and public media outlets that engage these issues at various levels.

While industrialized nations usually possess each of these institution types, many developing nations lack one or more of them - deficiencies that need to be corrected. Unless developing nations, particularly the more S&T-lagging among them, acquire such institutions along with suitable mechanisms for their effective interaction, it will be very difficult to promote S&T capacity, and to achieve sustainable form of economic development.

Specifically, the Study Panel members are convinced that each country should have, at a minimum, the following key institutions to successfully promote science and technology:

• Autonomous centers of excellence - research programs, within a university, a research institute, or operating independently, typically in one geographical location, and deemed by merit-review to be of the highest international quality in personnel, infrastructure, and research output;
• Strong universities - tertiary educational institutions for educating and training new generations of S&T talent, performing research and development in areas of societal need, and providing an independent source of information on topics of importance to the nation;
• Virtual networks of excellence - research programs jointly sponsored and conducted by research institutes in different geographical locations, with research personnel communicating and collaborating primarily via new technologies such as the internet and the World Wide Web, deemed by merit-review to be of the highest international quality in personnel, infrastructure, and research output;
• Independent national or regional academies of science, engineering, and medicine - member-based autonomous institutions, in which peers elect new members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing professional achievements, elect their own officials, perform programs of independent work, and inform the general public and national decisionmakers on science and technology aspects of public policies.

Creation of each of these four types of institutions is discussed in the following subsections.

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