Project Overview

Abstract

The main objective of the EPISIS project is to facilitate transnational cooperation between policy-makers and innovation agencies in the field of services innovation through parallel policy, strategic and operational level activities. The project shall offer an open platform for discussion on policy recommendations, test new policy approaches in support of services innovation and organise three policy-oriented international conferences.

Project Overview

Services innovation is a phenomenon that cuts horizontally across the whole economy. Services innovation is developed in all industries from service sector to traditional manufacturing sectors. Services innovation can create new business opportunities for companies from very different background and can therefore facilitate the transformation and renewal of industries, networks and clusters as a whole.

What distinguishes services innovation from the traditional understanding of R&D and innovation is its more non-technological nature. In the strict sense services innovation is, first and foremost, non-technological. Technology is rather understood as an enabling platform for new service concepts and for services based business models. The integration of services and technology is important for the development of services innovation, but the driver for innovation is not the technological solution as such but the value it can create both for the service provider and the customer. Public services are not specifically addressed by the project.

Specific objectives:

The heterogeneous character and the multidimensional, multilayer nature of services innovation call for an approach that involves parallel policy, strategic and operational level activities.

• The main policy level objective of the project is to advance a broad-based innovation policy approach by identifying emerging policy challenges for services innovation and designing new policy concepts in response to them.
• The main strategic level objective of the project is to enhance the understanding on services innovation and to promote further the mind-set change which is necessary for the recognition of services and services innovation as a powerful economic force in the EU.
• The main operational level objective of the project is to encourage the development of necessary policy tools and measures in the field of services innovation.