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Current Past

IRE Training Session on innovation policy
The IRE Secretariat is organising a first-ever training session for innovation policy makers in Madrid on 16-18 April.

The IRE Secretariat in collaboration with Fundación Madri+d is organising the IRE Training Session ‘Innovation policy design, implementation and evaluation’ in Madrid on 16-18 April 2008.

The deepened understanding of the nature of innovation has created a need for innovation policy-makers to have a broad understanding of the complex concept of innovation and knowledge about how to formulate and implement effective innovation policies that will be beneficial for their regions. In order to boost the innovation policy making capacities of European region, the IRE Secretariat is organizing this first-ever IRE Training Session with the aim to enhance the professional capacities and knowledge of regional staff working in the field of innovation policy. The training will provide a comprehensive overview of the whole innovation policy cycle, from design to implementation and follow-up.

The training will be given by academics with practical experience, IRE members with key competence and the IRE Secretariat experts. It will be built on interactive presentations by high-level trainers, concrete examples from the IRE network and group exercises. While providing concrete knowledge, the training will also challenge participants’ views on innovation policy and encourage debates and reflection. The training targets personnel of regional authorities, regional development agencies, non-governmental organisations and other organisations responsible for designing and implementing regional innovation policies, both in regions where innovation is a relatively new policy topic and regions that have undertaken innovation policy actions in the past but want to update their competences in the field.

Those interested in participating are kindly asked to register by filling in the registration form and returning it to the IRE Secretariat before 28 March. A maximum of 35 participants will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Do you want to increase your ability to work with innovation policy through a training session that is informative, creative and fun? Don’t miss this opportunity!

Vacancy at the IRE Secretariat
The IRE Secretariat is looking for an IRE Expert to join our Luxembourg team.

The IRE Secretariat is looking for an innovation policy expert to join our team in Luxembourg. The candidate will provide services to the
member regions of the Innovating Regions in Europe network. The expert should have at least four years of experience in the field of innovation policy development and European innovation-related projects. Further information about tasks and qualifications required is available through the link below.

Interested candidates are kindly asked to send their CV to Lena Mårtensson at .

CENTRAL EUROPE Programme calls for experts
The calls for experts for project assessment and on State Aid are open until 17 March.

CENTRAL EUROPE is a European Union programme that encourages cooperation among
the countries of Central Europe to improve innovation, accessibility and the environment and to enhance the competitiveness and attractiveness of their cities and regions. CENTRAL EUROPE invests €231 million to provide funding to transnational cooperation projects involving public and private organisations from Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. The programme is financed by the European Regional Development Fund and runs from 2007 to 2013.


The Managing Authority of the CENTRAL EUROPE has launched two calls for experts:
Successful candidates will enter an expert roster from which experts will be recruited. Interested experts, who would like to be involved in the first call for proposals of the CENTRAL EUROPE Programme should send their candidature until 17 March 2008. Further information about the application is available on CENTRAL EUROPE's website.

IMPACTSCAN policy intelligence tool available
The methodological tool developed by the impact assessment and benchmarking project IMPACTSCAN is avilable.

The IMPACTSCAN project has developed a method and tool for regional policy-makers to analyse and evaluate the impact of the regional innovation policy. It has been tested by regional agencies dealing with innovation policy in seven European regions, and co-funded by the European Commission.

IMPACTSCAN provides a monitoring and impact assessment tool which allows regional authorities to get a clearer picture of public support to innovation in their region, and to take decisions to improve the effectiveness of this support system. IMPACTSCAN focuses on the role of intermediaries in charge of innovation support. The tool is sufficiently standardised to allow cross-regions comparisons, but it also allows for flexibility in its use, in order to accommodate differences between regional contexts.

The IMPACTSCAN tool has been built on an MS-Excel file – a 'book' formed by several 'pages'- and uses the functionality associated to the pivot tables, MS-Excel dynamic tables allowing a range of options for comparison among a number of selected variables corresponding to one or more regions. Graphic presentations offer high versatility and possibilities of customisation for the benchmarking exercises. As demonstrated during the pilot phase, standard users of MS-Excel are able of taking advantage of the tool functionalities after a short practice period, supported by a short user manual.

The tool and user guide are available on IMPACTSCAN's website through the link below.