It is widely understood now that innovation is critical for development and growth of an economy. World over, governments have worked with a variety of policies to encourage innovative activity. Significant research has gone into the analysis of the complex linkages between public policy and innovation. While this research has generated a lot of interesting insights, it has also identified several gaps in our understanding of these linkages. This article is an attempt to pool together some of the ideas that academic research has highlighted on the linkages between innovation and public policy and identify the current challenges as well as opportunities for meaningfully exploring these linkages further. While it draws a lot on existing studies, the article does not provide a comprehensive or rigorous review of the literature on this subject. It is, at best, a tentative attempt to provide a broad perspective on where we stand vis-à-vis our understanding on the relationship between innovation and public policy. And admittedly, it is one of the many perspectives that a researcher can potentially have on this complex relationship.