Evaluating European Regional Innovation Strategies

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the degree of achievement of the Regional Innovation Strategy goals. This is an European Union Commission policy oriented toward the promotion of regional Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy design through the involvement of regional stakeholders. We analyse two categories of objectives: those dealing with process participation and those dealing with behavioural change. Our results show that the overall achievement of the goals is meaningful: the former have been achieved in a larger extent than the latter ones. However, other aspects such as multidisciplinary, and the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation system have not been so fruitful.

Acknowledgements

This paper draws on the knowledge base of the ERA-Spaces research group within the PRIME Network of Excellence. We would like to show our appreciation to Mikel Landabaso and his colleagues at the European Commission for their input into previous drafts of this paper. We would also like to acknowledge the advice and help received from Jordi Molas Gallart, Mikel Gómez Uranga, Elvira Uyarra, Manuel Laranja and the contributions made by two anonymous referees on the first draft of this article. Jon Mikel Zabala-Iturriagagoitia acknowledges the support of the Department of Education, Universities and Research of the Basque Country, and funding from its Programme for the Researchers Formation. We are indebted to Cynthia Little for her help with the language-editing of the text.

Notes

Many projects financed by the PRIME network of excellence deal with this issue. ERA-Spaces is one of them.

Aragón, Calabria, Western Makedonia, Northern EU, Auverge, Niederösterreich, Western Scotland, Yorkshire & the Humber and the West Midlands.

Although development of RIS began in 1991, the political impulse for the initiative by the European Commission did not materialize until 1994, so that the initiative could start working from 1996 onwards.

See http://www.proinno-europe.eu

The report contains the results of such innovative actions as the Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS), RIS+, Regional Innovation and Technology Transfer Strategies (RITTS), Regional Technology Plans (RTP), Regional Information Society Initiatives (RISI)—RISI1, RISI2 and RISI+—Inter-Regional Information Society Initiative (IRISI), and the Regional Technology Transfer (RTT).

As mentioned earlier, in this paper we focus on evaluating the RIS initiative, not the rest of innovative actions within the ERDFs as already done by SOCINTEC (2005). In this sense, we will only study the participation of regions within the RIS+ initiative, in order to analyse whether the already defined RISs have been applied and hence given continuity. The main goals of the RIS+ initiative include: (i) to begin the implementation of RIS recommendations and set up pilot projects and pilot networks; (ii) to continue the study of sectoral needs and trends and economic/innovation analysis in the region; (iii) to share and exchange ideas and good practice with comparable RIS/RITTS regions elsewhere.

In their RIS memory, Wallonie defines “Grappe” as a group of agents (such as firms of different sizes, high education institutions or research organizations) with common interests, needs, limitations, complementarities or interdependencies that develop joint activities.

Some other regions such as Altmark-Harz-Magdeburg, Epirus, Sterea Ellada and Puglia provide evidence that evaluation practices will be used in the future.

The goal achieved to a lesser extent is that of benchmarking studies, with a 58% success.