Promotion of novel tools and service concepts for innovation support

Efficient innovation support services encourage companies to strive for excellence and help them to realise their full potential in terms of growth and jobs creation. Europe INNOVA serves as a laboratory for cultivating new service packages in support for innovation. Despite a large number of instruments and tools available at national level or newly developed by various European policy initiatives, innovation support providers do not always make best use of them. Clearly, the mere reference to good practice examples is not sufficient to effectively promote their wider exploitation, in particular as they are not always ready for use and easily out of date. What is needed is a more systematic approach towards the promotion of novel tools and service concepts for innovation support in order to reap the full benefits of pilot actions such as promoted under Europe INNOVA.

A large number of novel tools and service concepts has been developed and tested by the first generation of Europe INNOVA projects. The challenge is now to leverage them, as widely as possible, into services provided by established innovation support providers in order to maximise their impact. The partners in the Enterprise Europe Network have a particularly high potential to take up such novel tools and service concepts. However, this requires to keep good record of them and to further develop them into full-fledged business support services. Without such further efforts the results may not be exploited in the best possible manner.

In order to address the challenge of better promoting and valorising existing tools and services, it is proposed to establish a new pillar under Europe INNOVA aiming at the promotion of novel tools and service concepts. It will provide the necessary support to better valorise the most promising new approaches developed under Europe INNOVA. As a first step, a “Repository of novel tools and service concepts in support of innovation” will be established that will further promote the best results from the first Europe INNOVA generation. These results shall be carefully documented and further promoted, by refining them and encouraging their take -up by regional and/or national business support organisations and private business consultancies. In addition, specific services will be offered to complement the most advanced solutions by the provision of specific training and guidance material for their wider use, such as envisaged for the further promotion of the IMP³rove tool on innovation management.

This action will be implemented through an open call for proposals resulting in a grant agreement, within the Europe INNOVA initiative. In implementing this action, close cooperation with the Europe INNOVA Web site and the INNO -Partnering Forum will have to be ensured.