The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law. At the same time the Netherlands has taken some distinct approaches and has pioneered a number of innovation policy developments, hi the recent history of STI policy, the emergence of a new sector-oriented, thematic approach is one example. The first attempts to develop an explicit innovation policy were primarily oriented towards the supply side, through the use of financial instruments to stimulate R&D. As this was considered insufficient to achieve the desired increase in the international competitiveness of Dutch producers, the intermediary infrastructure was strengthened to foster the dissemination of new technologies and to provide businesses with R&D results that would enable them to develop new innovative products. To this end, policy measures to stimulate the mobility of researchers from academia to private enterprise and to establish a network of regional innovation centres were put in place (Boekholt and den Hertog, 2005).