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North East Bulgaria’s Innovation Strategy ready
The Regional Innovation Strategy of North East Bulgaria Region has been finalised.

Membership of Bulgaria in the European Union has set new requirements to the social-economic development of the country and its regions. To become an equal partner of the other European regions, North East Region of Bulgaria decided to carry out necessary activities for improvement of innovativeness and competitiveness of the regional economy in order to help regional enterprises to be more competitive on the European market.

The Regional Innovation Strategy of North East Bulgaria was finalised in January 2008 after almost three years of work. The elaboration of the strategy was coordinated by the Regional Agency for Entrepreneurship and Innovations in Varna with active participation of all relevant regional actors as well as foreign partners from West Macedonia in Greece and Liguria and Abruzzo from Italy.

The strategy sets up the priorities of regional innovation policy until 2020 in conformity with the priorities of national strategic documents. It aims to improve innovation environment and culture in the region and relations among regional innovation actors. The priorities are as follow:

development of innovation potential of the region for increasing competitiveness of regional economy;
creation and development of pro-innovative environment (including infrastructure) to support entrepreneurship and business;
support of development of human potential and creation of modern innovation culture in the region.

The strategy also includes an Action Plan with proposed concrete projects for the period 2008 – 2020 and mechanism for constant monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the strategy.

Improving the transnational technology transfer in environmental sector
The first results of regional scale analysis of the European and national policies made under international project METTTES.

METTTES (More Efficient Transnational Technology Transfer in the Environmental Sector) is a project lead by ZENIT (Zentrum für Innovation und Technik in North Rhine Wesfalia in Germany), CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Italy), Malta Enterprise in Malta) and Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary). The main objective of the project is to test a new methodology to improve the transnational technology transfer in environmental sector between enterprises, research group and industries. This is based on the regional scale analysis of the European and national policies (in terms of European Directives and national/regional laws), the local incentives for environmental enterprises and their impact on the technology demand of companies. In this way, the technology demand does not come from the need of single small enterprises, but they are related to the economic-regulatory context of an entire region.

The details of this analysis are reported in Regional Demand Profiles (RDPs), documents including a comprehensive and detailed presentation of the region, the identification of present and foreseeable technology demands, the study of Best Available Techniques defined by IPPC Directive, in parallel with legal requirements, administrative regulations or national/regional environmental policy. METTTES produced 12 different RDPs and organized 12 international brokerage events on the same topics developed in each RDPs.

Regional Innovation Strategy to bridge the regional disparities in South West Bulgaria
South West Bulgaria’s Innovation Strategy has been finalised.

Regional authorities in Bulgaria have been facing a big challenge in trying to promote innovation culture in the region. A wide range of initiatives, including measures to support start-up firms or to encourage the research and business communities to work closely together, has been put in place in Bulgaria over the recent years and has had positive impact. But for a region to become a self-sustained ‘dynamo’ of innovation, a longer-term vision is essential. In this context the Regional Innovation Strategy for South West Bulgaria ‘BRIDGE’ has been developed with the aim to boost innovation and create an innovation-friendly environment in the region. The initiative is also expected to contribute to bridging the innovation disparities within the region (between capital Sofia and the rest of the region) and to build regional absorption capacity for the Structural Funds.

Within the development of RIS five priority sectors playing key role for future development of the region has been identified:

- Traditional sectors, leaders in employment, which have already positions established: food and beverages production, textile and machine production.

- Sectors with high potential to become engines of growth in the region: ICT and building and construction sector.

Foresight tools and techniqueshave been applied during developing alternative scenarios of future development of the regional innovation system and overall innovation performance of the region considering the advantages the region has as well as the innovation drivers and trends at regional, national and global level. The overall vision of the strategy is to create conditions for the transformation of the South West Bulgaria Region into a dynamic developing region with balanced priorities in the area of high technologies and sustainable environment, high intensity of scientific, research and innovation activities and leading positions in creation and dissemination of knowledge and intellectual capital with recognized European perspectives.

The New Inventors - How users are changing the rules of innovation
A report on understanding of role of the digital technologies and networks in user-led innovation.

User-led innovation, where users play an active part in the development of new or improved products and services, is exploding. Many of the products and technologies we now take for granted were developed by users – ‘ordinary’ but skilled and imaginative people who knew what they needed to do their jobs more effectively and decided to invent it themselves. Now there are new powerful tools that users can employ – the digital technologies and networks that they can exploit to create further innovations and to connect with each other.

To investigate this phenomenon, NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, UK) commissioned research from the entre for Research in Innovation Management (CENTRIM), University of Brighton, and the Science and Technology Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex.

This report sets out a way of understanding a new phenomenon - user-led innovation. Focusing on innovation that emerges from individual users and communities of users, it presents UK and international examples of firms that are harnessing user-led innovation – and firms that have emerged directly from communities of user innovators.

Most importantly, it asks the question: are we doing enough to encourage these forms of innovation – or simply to allow them to flourish?

UK Innovation Survey: innovation activities in Northern Ireland
This report provides a wide range of information related to innovation activity among enterprises in Northern Ireland.

The survey covers the three-year period from 2004 to 2006 and includes information on the extent of innovation activity, the impact of innovation on businesses and the barriers to innovation.

Headline figures show that 57% of Northern Ireland (NI) businesses were engaged in some form of business innovation activity during the period 2004-2006, compared to 64% for UK businesses. 20% of them introduced new products and 11% new processes. A larger proportion of enterprises in the production and construction sector (63 %) were innovation active compared to those in the distribution and services sector (55 %). Cost factors continued to be most commonly regarded as significant barriers to innovation among NI and UK enterprises.

The survey also brings information about motivational factors for innovation. Product related factors were considered by the respondents to be more important than process (cost) factors. Over half (53 %) of NI and nearly three fifths (57 %) of UK respondents rated improving the quality of goods or services as highly important, confirming a strongly customer-focused approach to innovation. Increasing the range of goods or services and entering new markets or increasing market share were also widely reported product-related drivers.

North Hungary and Kosice’s Innovation Strategy finalised
Bilateral Innovation Strategy of North Hungary and Kosice region has recently been published.

On the basis of close long-term collaboration between North Hungary and Kosice, these neighbouring regions decided to make a common interregional innovation strategy that would reflect needs of the regions in innovation support, increase their competitiveness through innovation and enable them to strengthen their cooperation.

Each of the regions has prepared its innovation strategy and than based on identical measures and actions of these strategic documents a common innovation strategy for both regions has been developed with the aim to reveal the synergy effects by common actions and projects realisation.

The priorities of the strategy are as follows:

•   The supplemental like development of the innovation infrastructure and the delivery systems including also the popularization and propounding of the innovation and R&D results.
•   The development of the human resource connecting to the knowledge economy.
•   The improvement of the networking conditions of the enterprises, the promotion of the creation of innovation poles, clusters.
•   The development of the financing systems of the innovation and the R&D.

For accomplishment of these strategic priorities, a number of measures and actions have been proposed in the strategy, of which the most important one is establishment of an organization (e.g. innovation agency, innovation centre) which would generate, hold together and harmonise the innovation processes.

South Muntenia’s Innovation Strategy ready
The Regional Innovation Strategy of South Muntenia Region for 2008-2013 has been finalised.

After almost three years of work, South Muntenia’s RIS project has come to an end and the region has just finalised its innovation strategy that covers the period 2008-2013. The strategy has been elaborated on the basis of an efficient partnership approach involving all relevant regional actors. Its overall vision is sustainable development of the region through innovation.

The strategy is focus on creating favourable climate for innovation and entrepreneurship and fostering cooperation between business and research in order to enhance valorisation of research results. The strategy is structured around three main priorities:

•   Increase regional attractiveness
•   Supporting competitiveness of the regional economic system
•   Leveraging endogenous entrepreneurship.

For the attainment of these strategic priorities, a number of actions have been envisaged in a coherent plan, which implementation can be ensured through Structural Funds, European initiatives and national funding.

New Regulation of the EC – aid for SMEs, research and innovation
These new rules automatically approve aid for jobs and grows in Members States.

The European Commission has adopted a General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER), which will come into force in the coming weeks, giving automatic approval for a range of aid measures and so allowing Member States to grant such aid without first notifying the Commission. The Regulation authorises aid in favour of SMEs, research, innovation, regional development, training, employment and risk capital. The Regulation also authorises environmental protection aid, aid measures promoting entrepreneurship, such as aid for young innovative businesses, aid for newly created small businesses in assisted regions, and measures tackling problems, like difficulties in access to finance, faced by female entrepreneurs. As well as encouraging Member States to focus their state resources on aid that will be of real benefit to job creation and Europe's competitiveness, the Regulation reduces the administrative burden for public authorities, the beneficiaries and the Commission.

By this Regulation the Commission is delivering on its commitments, in line with the ‘State Aid Action Plan’ which aims to create a simple, user-friendly and coherent set of rules for aid and the ‘Small Business Act’ adopted by the Commission in June 2008 that allows Member States to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at different stages of their development. All the categories of aid covered in the Regulation can be provided to SMEs.

The GBER also harmonises, as far as possible, all horizontal aspects applying to the different aid areas concerned. It incorporates the content of a series of existing state aid instruments adopted by the Commission since 2001: aid to SMEs, research and development aid in favour of SMEs, aid for employment, training aid and regional aid. In addition, the Regulation integrates five categories of aid which had, so far, not been block exempted: environmental aid, innovation aid, research and development aid for large companies, aid in the form of risk capital and aid for enterprises newly created by female entrepreneurs.

More information can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/state_aid/reform/reform.cfm.

Call for Ideas: Innovation Index project
NESTA is carrying out a project with the aim to establish relevant, rigorous and accessible measures of innovation.

Evidence-based policy demands reliable data. According to NESTA (the UK's National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), existing innovation metrics constrain policy-makers by reinforcing a linear model of innovation that bears little relation to the innovation that is most relevant to the modern UK economy. Traditional metrics fail to adequately capture ‘hidden innovation’: innovation in services, the public sector and the creative industries, or new trends in open and user-led innovation.

Around the world, policy-makers are demanding new ways to measure innovation. In Innovation Nation, NESTA was called upon to develop a new Innovation Index for the UK. Similar efforts are underway in other countries and in international bodies such as the OECD and European Commission. Correctly developed, these will ensure that the UK is better positioned to understand and support innovation in the future.

Over the next two years, the Innovation Index Project will seek to mobilise the best of the UK’s innovation practitioners, researchers and policymakers to develop the most relevant, rigorous and accessible measures of innovation. A Call for Ideas is being conducted online at http://www.innovationindex.org.uk/. A full version of the questions is also available on the site under the 'Innovation Index library' discussion thread.

NESTA's 'Measuring Innovation' policy briefing is available at http://www.nesta.org.uk/measuring-innovation/.

European Commission announces the Small Business Act for Europe
The European Commission's ambitious plan to address the needs of Europe's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Most jobs in the EU are provided for by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), companies of 250 employees or less. They have a crucial importance for the future development, but very often face enormous bureaucratic hurdles and obstacles. The European Commission is now proposing a genuine political partnership between the EU and the Member States reflecting the political willingness to recognise the central role of SMEs in the EU economy and to put in place for the first time a comprehensive policy framework for the EU and its Member States. The Small Business Act for Europe (SBA) proposal goes hand in hand with the recently announced plans of the European Investment Bank Group to simplify, modernise and diversify the range of its instruments to support SMEs.

At the heart of the SBA is the conviction that achieving the best possible framework conditions for SMEs depends first and foremost on society’s recognition of entrepreneurs, including crafts, micro-enterprises, family owned or social economy enterprises, and making the option of starting one’s own business attractive. This means that the rather negative perception of the role of entrepreneurs and risk-taking in the EU must change.

The European Small Business Act sets out 10 principles which should be adopted at the highest political level and concrete measures that will make life easier for small businesses. 10 principles shall guide the conception and implementation of policies at EU and Member State level, such as granting a second chance for business failures, facilitating access to finance and enabling SMEs to turn environmental challenges into opportunities.

IRE brochure on impact assessment and benchmarking
A brochure on regional innovation policy impact assessment and benchmarking has been published.

A brand new guidebook produced by the IRE Secretariat provides an introduction to the methodologies developed by the eight regional innovation policy impact assessment and benchmarking pilot projects carried out 2005-2008. These projects were undertaken to help assess the impact of regional innovation policies and create instruments for inter-regional benchmarking.

The guidebook highlights project conclusions for innovation policy professionals seeking to advance their understanding of impact assessment and benchmarking in Europe. It outlines the projects’ joint considerations on how the impact assessment and benchmarking process should be organised and conducted. Various approaches and tools are introduced, and the guidebook also includes brief presentations of the instruments and methodologies developed by each project.

The brochure can be downloaded from the IRE website. Hard copies will shortly be available upon request to the IRE Secretariat.

Last Update Thu, August 07, 2008 Legal Notice - the information on this site is subject to a disclaimer
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