The changing role of public support to academic spin-offs 19-20 February 2002, Luxembourg
Creating spin-off companies from public research is a policy priority in all Member States. The rationale is to exploit dormant opportunities in public research, to develop new economic activities in knowledge-intensive sectors, and to create high quality jobs. Spin-off policies proceed at the macro, meso and micro levels, aiming (1) to adapt the national legal and statutory framework; (2) to optimise the regional innovation systems; and (3) to restructure public research institutes, universities and curricula.
Modern spin-off policies are not limited to physical -incubator- infrastructures but focus on a favourable legal and statutory framework and stimulate a competitive local -milieu- offering high quality scientific and entrepreneurship training, laboratory facilities, and a spirited scene of business angels, venture capitalists, business support services, etc.
In some leading European regions this kind of self-sustaining innovative milieu has already emerged. Other regions implement pro-active policy schemes to catch up. Many initiatives target specific deficiencies: detection and competition for business ideas, entrepreneurship promotion, advisory and training programmes, coaching and mentoring schemes, brokerage mechanisms, technology transfer programmes, infrastructures and service provision, access and provision of seed and venture capital, etc. The most recent policy trend is to move towards a -systemic- approach integrating the specific support measures into the existing infrastructure.
The workshop offered the opportunity to 28 senior policy makers and programme managers, from 16 European countries, to debate the following questions:
- How do spin-off policies at the macro, meso and micro level interact? What should be the role of public policy in spin-off creation? What are the limits of public action? How to establish synergy with the private sector?
- What are the lessons learned from integrated and other policy approaches to spin-off promotion? How to measure the success of policies? What is a -right- policy portfolio and how is this linked to framework conditions?
- What are current policy trends in your country? In which direction do you expect public support to evolve in the coming years?
Information available for this workshop :
- 181 reads
