Introduction

This chapter begins the second part of our book and turns to the scripts and imaginaries of knowledge governance to show how they shape diverse sectoral policies and institutional practices through numerical global scripts and formulas. As discussed in Chapter 3, global indicators bring coherence to transnational governance by providing decision-makers with numerical global scripts to succeed in global economic competition. This is most apparent with the ‘world-class university’ model (see Chapter 2) that now steers the higher education policies of most countries (Mittelman 2017; Rider et al 2020). We also discussed a new emerging script of ‘talent competition’ that builds on the earlier ideas of competitiveness, excellence in higher education and good governance (Chapter 3).

To become effective, however, numerical knowledge needs to be narrated and communicated. Numbers alone are meaningless without the broader context and the interpretation of what these numbers symbolize. As discussed in our introductory chapter, policy scripts describe predetermined sequences of events based on storylines (Schank and Abelson 1977). While these are increasingly expressed in numbers (that is, digitization), we also see actors referring to different imaginaries of knowledge governance. These imaginaries are linked to grand narratives of global megatrends, pointing to intensifying global economic competition through digitalization and innovation, as well as the implications for those countries, institutions or individuals left behind. The ranking producers have also identified automation as one of their observed megatrends, discussing it as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ or ‘second machine age’, where digitalization and automation ultimately affect global competitiveness, innovation and knowledge governance.

Going beyond the state as a unitary actor, innovation and knowledge creation are tightly linked to cities as innovation hubs, reflecting the global trend of urbanization as part of the broader modernization movement. ‘Talents’ are important in this storyline. Policy makers, businesses and institutional leaders compete for the ‘best and brightest’ who would add value to their policies, product and service offerings. The talent competition script is one that builds on ‘more and more talents’ (attraction) and not on how to best integrate and retain this human capital over time, but this is also now changing. The storyline put forward by expert organizations such as the WEF is vague, but interestingly there are keen references to historical past that provide seeming analogies to the future. This chapter argues and shows that transnational knowledge governance operates on the perceptions of futures.