Project Overview
Abstract
The INNO-Partnering Forum will identify, develop and exploit synergies between public funding agencies in Europe and propose new approaches to innovation support for SMEs. The project will in particular explore and test new ways of service delivery, aiming to accelerate the take-up of the most advanced innovation mechanisms with proven efficiency and impact.Project Overview
Innovation agencies in Europe are faced with many challenges, including the need to develop new approaches for innovation support and the need to identify better synergies between support measures. It is increasingly important for innovation agencies to work more closely together to search for responses to these challenges, and take concrete steps towards ‘better practice’ in innovation support.Intensified mutual learning and practical cooperation between public innovation agencies will help SMEs in Europe to innovate better and faster. Increasingly SMEs play a significant role as change agents in the economy, serving as a channel for commercialisation of research and a source of new growth companies. The current economic crisis makes the role of innovative SMEs even more important and calls for more impact of public support.
The objective of the INNO-Partnering Forum is to improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of SME innovation support in Europe and has the ambition to become the central place for cooperation between innovation agencies in Europe.
More specifically, the proposed INNO-Partnering Forum aims to:
- Establish a mutual learning and cooperation platform for sharing experience and discussing the challenges facing innovation support in Europe;
- Identify and test promising (joint) support measures;
- Facilitate cooperation between innovation agencies as well as other public organisations assigned with the responsibility for implementing policy measures across Europe; and
- Deliver concrete policy recommendations on how innovation agencies across Europe can, by acting together, accelerate the take-up of the most advanced support systems for innovative SMEs.
Activities
The project is based on a number of important European policy challenges for SMEs (growth, internationalisation, capital market readiness, improved innovation processes) and some critical challenges with regards to efficiency and effectiveness of agencies and policy delivery systems supporting schemes addressing those challenges (better organisational learning, “smarter” public support, stimulation of innovation demand, ease of access to and need-driven public support).These challenges are then addressed by a number of supporting methodological approaches (peer-reviews, twinning/transferability exercises, reflection groups etc.) which are used to assess and disseminate current best-practises addressing these challenges.
