Workshop FAQ
What are INNO-Views Workshops?
INNO-Views Workshops are the follow-up of the TrendChart Policy Workshops. The European Commission's DG Enterprise and Industry now aims to further develop the existing tools and their integration in a consistent strategy, in accordance with the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP). INNO-views will contribute to feedback and input for EC innovation policies and actions, as for example the Communications to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions.
The most recent of these Communications has been published on September 13th, 2006, presenting ten priority actions to achieve a broad-based innovation strategy for the European Union. The Communication recommends acting jointly in several areas contributing to the creation of a true European innovation space. Within the overall framework of Europe INNOVA and PRO INNO Europe, which are themselves embedded in the wider framework of the CIP, the INNO-Views workshops are designed to significantly contribute to the success of the overall vision. Their role is to bridge the gaps between innovation policy analysis, policy learning and dissemination and transfer of good practices in innovation policy.
Which elements are changed compared to the TrendChart Policy Workshops?
In support of the objectives of the PRO INNO Europe Initiative, the INNO-Views workshops take a different approach than the TrendChart workshops in the following ways:
- Reorientation towards innovation policy development to achieve a broad-based innovation strategy that makes optimal use of all existing instruments
- Further enhancing the trend towards a more pragmatic approach in the content of the Trendchart Workshops, following the OMC methodology and encouraging also bottom-up information flows.
- Better integration of regional innovation aspects by collaborating with key actors in regional innovation
- Including the sectoral aspects of innovation more strongly by closely cooperating with the Europe INNOVA sectoral networks, thus for example also addressing policies to strengthen market driven innovation and development of lead markets.
- Stronger support of the dissemination and transfer of good practices and lessons learnt on new innovation policy instruments through a well-defined interface with the PRO INNO Learning Platform for which INNO-Views is considered to be a pre-stage.
Which policy areas do the workshops cover?
The workshops cover new and emerging themes in innovation policy to achieve a broad-based innovation strategy.
In order to facilitate the learning process and community building amongst innovation experts and policy makers, the themes of the workshops are orientated towards innovation policy development along the lines of the new Integrated Action Plan on Innovation and Research and the new Communication of 13 September 2006 and possible other new political orientations from the Commission.
INNO-Views identifies for the individual workshops innovation policy themes with a promising potential for trans-national learning with support of the other PRO INNO Europe modules, Europe INNOVA Communications, the Innovation Regions in Europe network and other initiatives. From these suggestions the Commission will select four themes per year for further in-depth treatment within the INNO-Views workshops.
Who are the typical workshop participants?
For each workshop, INNO-Views, working in close co-operation with the Commission, identifies relevant experts in order to collect their views and design an appropriate learning process (about 30 participants). This includes policy makers (designers and practitioners) and experts from academia, research and consultation at regional, national and European level, but also skilled representatives from business associations and individual companies who are able and willing to contribute to innovation policy development by participating in INNO-Views workshops.
What form do the workshops take?
Every workshop is prepared by a series of papers:
- a scoping paper defines the area, the focus and the angle under which it will be approached
- a background paper prepared by an external expert (e.g. from another INNO-Views module).
All workshops are two-day-events. They provide the opportunity to highlight different dimensions of the relevant topic in presentations, round table and panel discussions, but also in small working groups and to discuss conclusions and recommendations for innovation policy measures. The working language is English.
What are the outputs of the workshops?
Each workshop aims at innovation policy improvements and processes of trans-national policy learning. The workshop results and issues are presented in the output paper. The series of 12 INNO-Views Innovation Policy Workshops has the following main objectives:
- Identifying emerging innovation policy challenge
- Exploring and analysing new and better policy isntruments to address innovation policy challenges
- Establishing a dialogue and building a community amongst innovation policy experts, policy makers and innovation practitioners from industry and academia
- Facilitating policy development and co-operation
- Contributing to improved governance in European innovation policies at all levels (regional, national, European)
- Linking bottom-up experience in innovation policy execution to top-down design of innovation policies.
What are the relations with other PRO INNO Europe Modules?
INNO-GRIPS contributes to a number of workshops preparing and presenting “mini studies” as background documents for the themes covered.
INNO-Views workshops will build upon policy analysis conducted under INNO-Policy TrendChart. In order to prepare the background documents of the workshops, the INNO-Policy TrendChart will contribute to the workshop through country specific inputs.
INNO-Views will identify several themes, generally unexplored, and potentially eligible for the INNO-Learning Platform. INNO-Views will be a first step to identify most promising policies or programmes eligible for trans-national dissemination. INNO-Views workshops may also be organised to validate or discuss INNO-Learning Platform conclusions.
INNO-Metrics will provide existing statistical analyses on demand in order to prepare the workshops. On request of INNO-Views, specific analyses may be carried out, with jointly agreed deadlines and objectives.
Are the INNO-Views products and outcomes published?
All workshop presentations and papers are available from the INNO-Views website.
