Proceedings Report

Supporting Innovation in a Changing World

Proceedings Report Heraklion, Crete | 20-22 September 2009 | Prepared by Europe INNOVA Communications

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2

FOREWORD

3

1.

OPENING PLENARY SESSION

4

1.1.

1.2.

1.3.

1.4.

1.5.

1.6.

PROMOTING REGIONAL INNOVATION STRATEGIES DEVELOPING EUROPEAN INNOVATION STRATEGIES INNOVATING IN SERVICES SUPPORTING CLUSTER DEVELOPMENT STUDYING ECO-INNOVATION DEBATING THE ISSUES

4 5 6 7 8 9

2.

PARALLEL SESSIONS

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2.1.

2.2.

2.3.

PARALLEL SESSION 1: DEVELOPING NEW TOOLS AND INSTRUMENTS FOR INNOVATIVE SMES PARALLEL SESSION 2: INVOLVING SMES IN THE TESTING OF NEW TOOLS AND INSTRUMENTS PARALLEL SESSION 3: PROMOTING NEW FORMS OF CLUSTERS

11 16 20

3.

QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSIONS

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3.1.

3.2.

3.3.

Q&A SESSION 1: KIS 100 CLUB OF YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS: THE NEW APPROACH Q&A SESSION 2: EUROPE INNOVA COMMUNICATION AND PROMOTION Q&A SESSION 3: PROJECT MANAGEMENT

24 26 29

4.

CLOSING PLENARY SESSION

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4.1.

4.2.

4.3.

4.4.

4.5.

CONSULTING ON THE CHALLENGES OF INNOVATION RENEWING INNOVATION DEVELOPING A BALTIC SEA REGION (BSR) STRATEGY VOTING ON A NEW MISSION STATEMENT FOR EUROPE INNOVA CLOSING ADDRESSES

30 32 33 34 37

5.

SIDE EVENTS

38

5.1.

5.2.

5.3.

5.4.

INFORMAL GET-TOGETHERS OFFICIAL OPENING AND WELCOME RECEPTION INNOVATION TOURS GALA DINNER

38 39 40 42

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Foreword The Annual Partnering Event (APE) of Europe INNOVA, the EU’s flagship initiative for innovation support, took place in Heraklion, Crete, on September 20 – 22. The fact the Europe INNOVA has just entered its second phase and had launched additional projects attracted around 200 participants. These individuals were either working in new or existing Europe INNOVA projects or searching for partners, inspiration and funding. The APE was organised by the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce and Industry, with the support of the Special Secretariat for Competitiveness of the Greek Ministry of Development, and in collaboration with the European Commission.

The Partnering Event provided an effective platform for Europe INNOVA stakeholders to exchange information and review the potential for synergies with other European initiatives, and especially, PRO INNO Europe®. However, the debates over the three days highlighted the need for a new Europe INNOVA Mission Statement and during the Closing Plenary Session, the European Commission presented four sets of options and a choice from each set was made by electronic voting. Based on this voting, a revised Mission Statement was drafted and uploaded on to the Europe INNOVA site for further consideration and consultation.

The first generation of Europe INNOVA had primarily been concerned with networking. Now, the partnerships in this second generation are expected to build upon past experience and develop new tools and instruments across the areas of knowledge intensive services, cluster cooperation and eco-innovation. “Get started and experiment with the further development of existing concepts!” was the key message of Reinhard Büscher Head of Unit, ‘Support for Innovation’ at DG Enterprise and Industry, who added “for example, by applying the concept of innovation vouchers to new fields of application.” He also advised projects to take an ambitious step by step approach, or in his own words, “to start with the Matterhorn but ultimately to aim at Everest.”

This proceedings report provides an overview of the contributions that were made and also the discussions that took place in Heraklion, either during the official sessions or during the many unofficial meetings and side events.

By clicking on the names of the speakers in each session the relevant presentation will be made available.

More information on the event can be found at www.europe-innova.eu/crete2009

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1. Opening Plenary Session Lisbeth Kirk moderated this session which brought together five different viewpoints on the major building blocks of innovation policy.

1.1. Promoting Regional Innovation Strategies Costas Kokkinoplitis presented the major investment incentives and tools that support competitiveness and innovation in Greece. The Ministry of Development is responsible for the ‘Competitiveness’ 2000-2006 Operational Programme, with €3 billion of public spending, and the ‘Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship’ 2007-2013 Operational Programme, which has €3.2 billion of public spending. Both programmes aim to develop the necessary infrastructure for entrepreneurship and investment support, to simplify the business environment by reducing legislation and regulations and to stimulate the modernisation of business and of new investments. These objectives will be achieved by accelerating the transition to a knowledge-based economy, by developing healthy, sustainable and extrovert entrepreneurship, and by making Greece a more attractive place to develop business activities in relation to the environment.

The Greek State, in an effort to strengthen regional development and to create an accessible industrial infrastructure that will attract large investments, institutionalised the so-called Industrial Areas (VI.PE.), Small Industry Parks (VIO.PA), Investor Reception Centres (KYE) and Business and Technology Development Centres (KETA). For more information on this see www.competitive-greece.gr These measures complement activities to strengthen the Greek Innovation system, which can be seen at www.gsrt.gr

The Composition of the Greek Innovation System: • Twelve thematic research centres; • Fifteen Science and Technology parks and incubators; • S ector oriented technology companies aiming to support the competitiveness of their sectors through the provision of tailored services of technological or scientific nature; • Regional innovation poles; • The Hellenic technology cluster initiative Corallia – see www.corallia.org; • The Hellenic Innovation Relay Center(HIRC) which aims to promote the diffusion of innovative technologies services and know-how and to facilitate international technology transfer agreements - see www.enterprise-hellas.gr; • The Hellenic Project for Wider Application of R&D (PRAXIS) that offers brokerage services to Greek companies and Research Institutions and provides information, mediation and advisory services to all stages of technology transfer and the exploitation of research results - see www.help-forward.gr.

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The Competiveness and Entrepreneurship Operational Programme (EPAN II) provides specific support to eight sectors.

It has helped with the enactment of the new investment law. This, in turn, has stimulated investment activities in the primary, secondary and tertiary sector and has also been instrumental in establishing new cluster initiatives on biotechnology, energy, culture and maritime.

1.2. Developing European Innovation Strategies Henriette von Eijl, began by underlining the fact that Europe is still lagging behind in science, technology and innovation in comparison with its main competitors, the US and Japan. At Member State level, the situation is quite heterogeneous, as the performance of some Member States is on a par with the best in the world, whilst others are still in catch-up mode. European deficits in tertiary education, the number of researchers, public private co-operative ventures and international patenting, may be magnified by the economic downturn. Data from the Innobarometer 2009 survey has indicated a sharp reduction in companies that intend to increase innovation spending - from 35% in 2006-2008 to 12% in 2009. Also the percentage of companies that plan to reduce innovation spending rose to 28% in 2009 compared to only 9% in 2006 – 2008. At the same time, companies see opportunities for innovation in sustainable or energy efficient products and services, new services or products for older consumers and emerging export markets.

Surprisingly, between 18 and 35% of companies cite environmental regulations, new regulations in general, changes in public financial support or changes in taxation as being policy initiatives that have had a positive effect on innovation.

At European level, the 2005 Communication on ‘More Research and Innovation – Investing for Growth and Employment’ set the stage for an ‘Integrated Approach’ between the structural funds, state aid, industry-academia cooperation and services. The ‘broad based innovation strategy’ in 2006 outlined nine priority areas for the Commission in this policy field. The activities were continued by the Innovation package entitled ‘Reviewing Community Innovation Policy in a Changing World,’ which compiled analytical documents on innovation in services, the Lead Market Initiative, financing innovation, public support for innovation and an assessment of EU innovation policies, during the period 2005 – 2009.

In concluding her presentation, Henriette van Eijl pointed to the achievements of the EU innovation policy and also the outstanding gaps in EU innovation policy. These were a costly and fragmented IPR system, standardisation that is out of sync with research and market needs, a fragmented venture capital market, a complex EU programme landscape and inefficient governance structures between the European, national and regional levels.

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Exhibit 1: Achievements of EU innovation policy since 2005 – some examples

Clearly these issues would have to be dealt with in the coming European Innovation Plan. This plan aims to link the political priorities and the post 2010 Lisbon agenda, to streamline the relationship with Member States and regions, to focus on European value added and to tackle the global economic, environmental and social challenges.

1.3. Innovating in Services Jenny Tooth considered the services market and the systemic failures, which hinder the effective support of services innovation in Europe, including access to high growth markets and sources of risk capital. A review had been made of the policy and practical initiatives to support services innovation at EU, regional and national levels, including the role of the KIS Sectoral Partnerships under Europe INNOVA. The main question that it raised was how to move towards an effective and coordinated model of support for services innovation, building on these policy initiatives and models of good practice, which would ensure that services innovation is better understood and attracts investment? “A model that would enable us to capitalise on the growth potential of services innovation across Europe,� she explained.

Services have long been considered as a driving force for competitiveness and during the current global economic downturn, they may demonstrate the potential to be the main force for recovery and the main source of growth and new jobs in the European knowledge economy. Yet, current innovation support mechanisms are still predominantly biased towards technological innovation. There are a few countries that have focused on services innovation including Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland and the UK. Some have explored new models of services innovation support at regional and national level, while others have introduced services cluster initiatives in digital content, healthcare, creative industries and mobile services. At European level, the single market for services has still not been implemented but programmes have been created for services innovation and lead markets in ehealth, construction and recycling and renewable energy.

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KIS-IP pilots new support mechanisms and tools for access to innovation, supports growth, including finance, and creates new ecosystems through, for example, incubation and innovation vouchers. It also provides opportunities to share approaches and to create economies of scale by embedding services innovation support at national and regional level. KIS-IP also raises awareness about services and promotes services innovation in seven sectors namely: IT; spacebased applications; renewable energy; creative industries; mobile services, digital media; and sustainable construction.

Exhibit 2: Addressing the challenges in services innovation

The major challenge is to unlock the growth potential of services and this is even more important in times of crisis. This could be done by increasing the number of successful gazelles in Europe, securing access to high growth international markets that is important for competitiveness and scalability, extending the availability of risk capital and adopting a more targeted approach towards high potential services entrepreneurs. All of these efforts could be harnessed by creating a more coordinated cross-border innovation support system and a more favourable business environment.

This step should combine European strengths to unlock the potential of services innovators who can then drive Europe´s recovery and assure world competitiveness.

Click here to view the interview of Jenny Tooth.

1.4. Supporting Cluster Development Emiliano Duch highlighted synergies between innovation support at regional, national and EU levels. His starting point was innovation activities in clusters – a topic which took centre stage after research by Becattini on industrial districts in the 1970s and by Porter on the wealth of nations in the 1980s. Since then, regions have started to use clusters to promote their competitiveness and innovation.

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Cluster initiatives were traditionally formed as a reaction to increased global competition. Companies ventured into sharing parts of the value chain such as research and logistics or developing common services like training.

The Catalonian leather industry was a particularly successful story. In 1993, the industry was not able to meet EC environmental regulations and was fast losing customers from shoe manufacturing. The cluster subsequently reinvented itself through the introduction of a large technology centre that now certifies their products for use as luxury upholstery in cars and aircraft. It also now fulfils all the EU environmental regulations through a shared investment in a waste water treatment plant.

Emiliano Duch said that “Now, companies optimise their value chains at a global level and thus leave less room for collaborative initiatives at regional and national levels. Consequently, some parts of the value chain have been relocated to lower cost countries.” However, developed countries can respond by redefining their businesses through the incorporation of leading technologies and the addition of advanced services and global sourcing. His first example of successful redefinition was a company that changed its business model from supplying ventilation equipment to managing the quality of the air in buildings. HIs second example was Akademiska Hus that owns and manages the buildings of Swedish universities and research institutes. It reduced energy consumption by 50% over six years, through introducing and optimising new energy saving equipment.

According to Emiliano Duch, the future challenges are: to develop leading demand conditions for services – the EU single market for services; to strategically upgrade clusters to identify new technology needs - global technology alliances; to develop new support tools for cluster excellence - facilitate changes to business models and the integration of services; and to link to other clusters on a global scale - global restructuring of the value chain.

Click here to view the interview of Emiliano Duch.

1.5. Studying Eco-innovation Fabio Iraldo´s presentation focused on eco-innovation by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and was based on the following five studies carried out by Sant’Anna Advanced School and Bocconi University.

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• P ROBEST found that 57 of the 100 Italian SMEs in the study had introduced some form of ecoinnovation during the preceding three years and that 75% of these companies relied on some form of EU-related funding.

• The study on ‘ENVironmental Innovation by SMEs’ was carried out in Italy, Portugal, Denmark, the UK and the Netherlands using a sample of more than 200 companies. The study concluded that the most effective way of introducing eco-innovation was to join forces within networks. There were three different types of network: the business network or partners in the supply chain; the knowledge network or universities and research centres; and the institutional network that can play a role by providing funding. More than 80% of the SMEs used EU-related or national funding for their ecoinnovation processes.

• The Coordemas study on behalf of DG Environment analysed 44 pilot projects on the application of eco-management and organisational innovation. More than 450 SMEs were involved and received support. However, only 60% of the projects were considered to have been successful in helping SMEs to set up an eco-management system.

• T he ECO-DISTRICTS study covered 54 industrial clusters which involved a total of 93.000 companies and 536.000 employees. Only 20 out of 54 clusters had mature eco-innovation processes but each cluster had at least developed one eco-innovation.

• The PIONEER project in the Paper Industry had covered 43 SMEs, of which 22 achieved ecomanagement and audit scheme (EMAS) registration or Ecolabel certification for product-related innovation, via support from the EU LIFE programme.

The most important conclusion from these studies was that EU funding is still a key driver and an essential support for eco-innovation. This is particularly true for SMEs, as they have less in terms of human, technical and economic resources. In addition, SMEs have to rely on a network to use EU funds effectively and usually they have to be stimulated and guided by a catalyst such as a research centre, a consultant, a chamber of commerce or a trade association.

1.6. Debating the Issues Anne Lidgard reported that green issues were a top priority in Sweden, where the government believes firmly that developing an eco-efficient society was pivotal. Eco-efficiency is also important to European competitiveness. The crisis had offered an opportunity for policy-makers to make substantial changes but in the recovery packages only 1.3 to 25% of the resources are devoted to green issues, whereas the equivalent percentage for South Korea is 80% and China is also investing heavily. Inactivity and indecision has placed the leading positions of Europe at risk in many areas, despite the fact that the costs of early action are much lower than the cost of inaction. This is well-researched and welldocumented, for example in the Stern report. Anne Lidgard was of the opinion that SMEs play an important role in this transition and that the Small Business Act was important in unlocking the potential of SMEs. It is now up to the Member States to implement its 10 principles and to ensure that SMEs benefit from a large internal market. Transnational clusters can also help in this respect and the Baltic Sea region project is one such example. She then asked “Is the European Commission ready to introduce eco-efficiency into the innovation plan?”

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Reinhard Büscher expressed his appreciation for the previous presentations and added that “it is interesting to see how others interpret the messages from Brussels and how they implement them.” In this critical phase, the old principles were valid but he believed that “we have to do more – we have to be more effective. We have to change our policies more radically because the fundamentals have changed fundamentally.” He saw two major challenges. Firstly, to make innovation support more efficient, as the available financial resources for innovation would not increase and many enterprises are not happy with the kind of innovation support they currently receive. Innovation support should be better customised and not be supported everywhere and for everybody in the same way. Secondly, innovation support should specifically address societal needs and challenges, for example by promoting sustainability and energy efficiency through innovation. In this respect he said that “we need radical, not incremental, innovation and we have to be more courageous to develop and test new tools and instruments that better address societal needs and involve users better into innovation processes.”

Costal Kokkinoplitis wanted to know how knowledge could be transferred to countries like Romania, Greece and Hungary because these countries must develop if there is to be a single European society. In terms of the spending of the Commission’s money, he felt that it was important to find better ways of selecting better projects. However, he said “it is vital that Europe INNOVA continues to bring people together and stimulates such interesting discussions.”

On the question of selection, Reinhard Büscher indicated that “if we feel obliged to the tax payer then we have to apply stricter rules. We have to bet on excellence and to select the most promising partners.” Anna Lidgard agreed with the call for more selective action although she thought that there were already quite severe selection criteria. She said that “nonetheless, we have to learn how to identify and kill a bad project early on – this is better than playing the masterminds and pretending to know the appropriate selection criteria.” Reinhard Büscher clarified his position by stating that scrutiny of selection criteria was not sufficient by itself. The most important thing was to have a clear idea of the overall aims. He added that “we should identify first the challenges to be addressed. We then have to look for the best partners who could provide practical solutions to them. By this, we kill two birds with one stone.”

Jenny Tooth endorsed the importance of private sector leverage and the power of open innovation through having exchanges between large and small companies. She noted that the customers were the drivers of innovation but Anne Lidgard believed that public procurement was also a very important tool. She said that the Ericsson Company would not have existed without informed public procurement and that the Lead Market initiative was very important in this respect.

Anna Lidgard then stressed the importance of a properly functioning eco-system and indicated that Silicon Valley had a climate that fostered innovation and asked “How can we create such eco-systems in Europe?” Whereas, Jenny Tooth raised the important issue of risk taking ability, which she saw as the capacity to build a business, to invest, to fail and to start again. The Structural Funds have huge potential to promote this capacity but within a number of established boundaries, and she felt that “we have to go outside these boundaries.”

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2. Parallel Sessions Prior to the launch of the parallel sessions, Reinhard Büscher delivered a motivational speech on the tools and instruments to be developed within the new phase of the Europe INNOVA initiative. He explained that the first generation of Europe INNOVA had primarily been concerned with networking and that it was now vital to build upon past experience and develop new or better tools and instruments in support of innovative enterprises.

“Get started and experiment with the further development of existing concepts!” was his key message. For example, by applying the concept of innovation vouchers to new fields of innovation consultancy and trying to better support user involvement in innovation processes. He also suggested that the Europe INNOVA partnerships should help to address societal challenges and reminded them to deliver practical results for real problems. For this, he suggested five guiding principles for the development of new tools1 and instruments under Europe INNOVA: 1. Novelty – developing new approaches that have not previously been tested; 2. Usability - ensuring that the tools address real problems and can be operationalised; 3. Scalability - moving from a pilot phase to full-scale implementation; 4. Replicability – enabling other stakeholders to take similar action; 5. Adaptability – providing flexible tools that can be adapted to different environments.

2.1. Parallel Session 1: Developing New Tools and Instruments for Innovative SMEs Europe INNOVA aims to develop, test and promote new or better tools in support of innovation, particularly for use

by SMEs. All of the projects were invited to contribute to this objective and to explore ‘better practice’ in support of innovation. Recently, a number of new Europe INNOVA projects had been launched that have accepted this challenge.

The objective of this Parallel Session was, firstly, to verify the type of tools and instruments that would be developed and tested by the Europe INNOVA projects, and, secondly, to explore how synergies between these different projects could be best exploited.

Mette Quinn from the ‘Support for Innovation’ Unit at DG Enterprise and Industry explained the aims and expectations that the European Commission’s services had for the tools and instruments. Europe INNOVA is not an initiative that directly supports SMEs. The new tools and instruments developed by the projects need to be tested with SMEs, but they will not be implemented and rolled-out on a large scale through Europe INNOVA. The main impact of these tools should be on a wider community through rolling them out at national or regional level. She also reminded those present of the five principles for these tools and instruments2 that had been outlined by Reinhard Büscher in his introduction to the parallel sessions. Four case studies from the ongoing and new Europe INNOVA projects were then presented.

The first case study was provided by Katharina Krell from Greenovate! Europe. It was based on her experiences of the Knowledge Intensive Services in the Planning, Installation, Maintenance and Scrap services (KIS-PIMS) project and focused on innovation vouchers, as a versatile method of delivering innovation support. According to Katharina, the majority of innovation support mechanisms do not reach a sufficiently high number of SMEs. This systemic failure is

1 2

Since the Annual Partnering Event and, after further consultation, a sixth principle has been added: Subsidiarity - addressing challenges that are common to a number of Member States and important enough to be tackled jointly Please see footnote above

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being addressed in a growing number of countries through innovation vouchers, which provide easy and user-friendly access for SMEs to external expertise, which can be purchased with the vouchers. Vouchers had mainly been used to access technical expertise but the more recent voucher schemes had addressed other needs of SMEs, such as sourcing business and internationalisation expertise.

Exhibit 3: Innovation vouchers for service development in the KIS-PIMS project

The KIS-PIMS project provided innovation vouchers for renewable energy services innovators. This was undertaken in cooperation with public innovation agencies, clean energy clusters and business innovation experts in France, Finland and Austria.

The second example was provided by Robert Sanders, from the Knowledge Intensive Services in Satellite downstream applications (KIS4SAT) project that had developed an intellectual property (IP) manual and tool. This IP manual has been used by innovation experts to support SMEs that are offering services using satellite data and, then afterwards, by these very same SMEs. The targeted SMEs are those operating in Downstream Value-Adding sectors of spacebased applications. The targeted innovation experts are public bodies, such as Innovation Agencies, Space Agencies, Incubators and Chambers of Commerce, as well as private bodies, such as space-focused clusters, professional associations and innovation management consultants.

The management and protection of intellectual property is very relevant to Knowledge Intensive Services (KIS) companies. Although most services innovations are not patentable, other means of effective IP protection is a significant motivation for innovation, and increasingly services R&D highlights the need to protect an ever-evolving IP.

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Exhibit 4: Various IP protection methods for KIS companies, as listed in KIS4SAT

There are also many informal practices that can be effective in protecting and managing IP in services companies and the manual helps KIS companies to choose the most appropriate protection methods.

The third case study on recycling and resource efficiency (RRE) in manufacturing SMEs was provided by Uwe Kรถnig of the recently launched REMake project. REMake addresses innovation support in RRE by testing a set of consultancy tools with a two-stage voucher scheme. The project involves six national and regional agencies, three industrial associations and seven technical centres and the consultants in testing a self-assessment tool for SMEs on RRE innovation.

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Exhibit 5: Functioning principles of the voucher system in REMake project

REMake vouchers support the early adoption of eco-innovation standards and labels in the RRE field, as this is likely to boost competitiveness. They focus on areas such as eco-design, life-cycle assessment and eco-innovation management. The REMake project will support the vouchers with an information system and a competition for RREinnovative SMEs, which will showcase the best examples.

The TAKE IT UP project explained by Andrea di Anselmo of Meta Consulting, provides an exploitation facility to turn the novel tools and service concepts that have been developed within Europe INNOVA partnerships into well-used business practices for Innovation Services Providers (ISP).

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Exhibit 6: Focus and the support activities of TAKE IT UP project

TAKE IT UP will provide Europe INNOVA projects with a repository of tools, a validation platform with related advice, coaching in exploitation and exit strategies, as well as marketing and communications support. It will sustain partnerships throughout the whole exploitation chain of their projects, including practice development, practice accessibility and maturation, practice delivery and, finally, practice promotion. It will also ensure that all relevant results are assessed and adjusted for a durable take up and that the whole development process is oriented towards market exploitability.

The Main Issues Raised in Discussion The final discussion on the four case studies took note of the many voucher schemes that had been established to support innovative SMEs and, at the same time, it suggested that a systematic evaluation of these schemes should be conducted to identify, and learn from, their best practices. It was concluded that innovation vouchers can be a very effective tool for providing innovation support to services companies. However, the implementation requires to be thought through carefully both in terms of the specific delivery mechanism and type and quality of eligible services providers. In addition, vouchers should also be seen as an instrument for fostering demand for knowledge intensive services.

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2.2. Parallel Session 2: Involving SMEs in the Testing of New Tools and Instruments This session focused on the challenge of involving SMEs in the testing phase. The objective of the session was to share experiences on how to select and approach SMEs if their involvement was to be secured. The session exchanged good practices and discussed different options to approaching SMEs from establishing direct contact, through contacting intermediaries to launching open calls on web sites.

Christophe Guichard, Policy Officer from the ‘Support for Innovation’ Unit at DG Enterprise and Industry, introduced the session by positioning innovation support tools in the wider innovation policy context.

Exhibit 7: Innovation support tools as a part of innovation policy

He also referred to the five principles for these tools and instruments that had been outlined by Reinhard Büscher in his introduction to the parallel sessions. The projects should become test laboratories for developing and validating new tools that can then be mainstreamed. As in any laboratory, an emphasis needs to be placed on the careful planning and documenting of the testing phase, through the use of specific procedures and guidelines, such as a testing calendar indicating the major milestones for the process. Although Europe INNOVA does not address SMEs directly, the new tools should be tested with at least 200 SMEs. The contributions from the following speakers then outlined their experiences in this respect.

Ms Eva Diedrichs from AT Kearney highlighted some of the lessons learned from the IMP³rove project. During its lifetime, IMP³rove contacted more than 3000 SMEs and more than 2600 of these SMES registered on the dedicated platform, whilst almost 2300 completed the IMP³rove assessment form. The experience of the project negated the assumption that the quality of the tool would be sufficiently attractive to engage SMEs in the testing phase. IMP³rove’s approach was to emphasise the benefits that a company could receive by being involved in the testing. A variety of

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channels were established to access SMEs, including contacts with intermediaries such as development agencies, chambers of commerce and trade associations, clusters, private equity firms and consultancies, as well as the use of direct marketing, internet and media. Such diversity in approaches was a response to the diversity of the contexts in which the SMEs and intermediaries operated.

Exhibit 8: Main lessons learned from IMP³rove project

Stakeholders were sought who could act as ‘door openers’ and bring along more companies into the testing process.

Thus, small consultancy companies were approached that in exchange for training in IMP³rove, promised that they would involve at least one SME in the testing of the tool. IMP³rove also invested a lot of effort in engaging the media and developing personal contacts with the companies. In addition, the project developed a network of experts who used the IMP³rove approach. This network has become a community through which individual experts can engage with others who share similar interests. One of the main messages was that the most successful approaches were those where the benefit to the stakeholders was highest. Participation in the testing phase should thus be considered and presented as a personal benefit for each stakeholder.

Click here to view the interview of Eva Diedrichs.

Natalia Blagburn from Finance Tree presented the experience of the ACHIEVE MORE project. The main ambition of the ACHIEVE MORE Partnership is to accelerate growth of knowledge intensive services SMEs in the ICT sector across Europe. The project is operated in collaboration with ICT clusters, investors and business and technology incubators.

It spans 27 countries and involves 73 organisations that can reach out directly to more than 10 000 companies. She started by underlining the importance of defining the final beneficiary of the toolkit in order to be able to plan and execute the testing phase. ACHIEVE MORE developed a working definition and criteria to target the companies that were most likely to benefit from the use of the tool.

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Exhibit 9: Approach adopted by ACHIEVE MORE

The project developed a coaching toolkit on start-up growth and the development of innovative models for seed funding, linked to incubators and clusters. As was the case for IMP³rove, ACHIEVE MORE created a community of practitioners who shared experience via an online communications platform called the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Exchange or EIX, for short – see www.eandix.ning.com.

Vincent Morfouace from Technofi then gave some insights into how to motivate SME managers to take part in the testing of tools. The presentation included practical advice based on experience from the IMP3rove, KIS-PIMS and KIS4SAT projects and focused on: • Identifying and contacting SMEs (e.g. use of websites, phone recruiters); • Convincing the SME management to get involved in testing; • Building trust (e.g. face-to-face meetings); • Explaining the benefits of testing the tool (e.g. use of figures, estimates); • Preparing an action plan for the implementation of the testing.

The main message was the need to establish trust between the project and the SMEs and to demonstrate the benefits of the tool to the companies. Vincent Morfouace stressed that to gain SME involvement, the projects should learn about their needs and future challenges. A good understanding of SMEs is a key factor in building the trust. He also suggested that the benefits should be demonstrated in terms of expected returns for the company, as well as for the clients of the SME.

The Main Issues Raised in Discussion During the panel discussion, speakers underlined the need for a clear explanation or demonstration of the benefits of participating in the testing phase. Prior to approaching the SMEs, the projects must have clearly identified their target group(s) and the final beneficiaries of the tool, and gained an understanding of their needs and capacities. This view was reinforced by several interventions from the floor.

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However, a sobering contribution came from the CEO of an innovative SME, who said “if the companies saw a real benefit in testing the tools offered by the Europe INNOVA projects, there would be no need to invest so much time in motivating them to take part in the exercise.” He also advised the projects to seek a partner-like relationship rather than adopting a mentoring attitude, which can often be considered as patronising by businesses.

Reinhard Büscher indicated that it was important to remember that the target audience of the Europe INNOVA projects are intermediaries. The projects should not focus on approaching SMEs directly but should undertake the testing in a close collaboration with existing innovation agencies. This would not only save a substantial amount of time and speed up the move towards the testing phase but would also ensure that the results would be implemented further, at a later stage. He suggested that SMEs could be attracted either by direct contacts through established innovation agencies or by open calls of interest published on relevant web sites. Representatives of the Swedish agency VINNOVA added that the projects should make a more effective use of the existing networks of intermediaries, in particular, the Enterprise Europe Network.

Reinhard Büscher clearly expressed his view that testing new tools and instruments should allow for failure. “The aim is not to provide ready-made solutions to enterprises but to test, under real conditions, what they need and which approaches work best”, he said. This comment triggered an open discussion on the role of the Europe INNOVA partners during the testing phase. There was broad agreement that a good balance had to be struck between the need to offer incentives for SMEs to participate in such test beds and the interest of Europe INNOVA to find new solutions. “This includes the need to test the limits of new instruments, which makes it necessary to test different approaches amongst which some will hopefully be accepted by the SMEs but others may fail,” Reinhard Büscher clarified.

2.3. Parallel Session 3: Promoting New Forms of Clusters The rules of the game in the economy are constantly changing and thus, clusters and cluster organisations seek new responses to new challenges driven by changing innovation patterns and by societal needs. User-driven innovation is not only a challenge for enterprises but also for clusters and cluster organisations. The competitive advantage of enterprises lies in serving the users’ needs better, which often requires involving and empowering users, even at the early stages of the development of the product or service. At the same time, the issue of sustainability can be successfully addressed by clusters that can deliver more effective solutions. The objective of the session was to identify ways in which cluster organisations could adapt themselves to better serve their cluster members under the changing circumstances. This session was chaired by Leonidas Karapiperis, Advisor in Charge of New Initiatives in the context of the European Research Area, at DG Research of the European Commission.

Kincsö Izsak, Policy Officer from the ‘Support for Innovation Unit’ at DG Enterprise and Industry, set the scene by pointing to four new challenges that cluster organisations are facing in building up new strengths. These were: the identification and exploitation of the ‘white fields of innovation’ at the cross-roads of different sectors; the support for ‘societal needs’ through the clusters; the promotion of ‘user-driven’ innovation especially for SMEs; and the development of cluster initiatives in emerging industries, such as creative industries or services. These challenges will be addressed by several projects that have just been launched under Europe INNOVA. The European Cluster Observatory’s new phase will provide a collaboration platform for cluster organisations enabling them to build cross-sectoral partnerships and joint innovative projects more easily. Europe INNOVA partnerships will experiment with involving users directly in cluster activities. For example, they will test innovation voucher schemes to facilitate user-driven innovation processes, offering vouchers to SMEs to work together with user labs/living labs. The ImMediaTe partnership will create a sectoral platform, which will support innovative SMEs from the digital media and creative sector through knowledge transfer, investment attraction and collaboration within clusters in order to unlock

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their potential of creativity and innovation. Clusters’ response to societal needs will be boosted by the EcoCluP cluster partnership. This project will help with the adaptation, testing and implementation of cluster support tools and services for gazelles in the eco-innovation sector and should result in the creation of better opportunities for cluster companies to expand.

During the second presentation, Jakob Rasmussen, Chairman of Living Labs Global in Denmark, described the approach of his non-profit association to creating new markets for mobile, wireless and satellite services, in close collaboration with cities, firms and users worldwide. By means of a number of examples, he demonstrated the necessity of finding places in the globalised world where demand for small niche players exists. Small niche players in industries that have so far not been intensely researched are especially interesting for Living Labs. While services are mainly offered and delivered to the traditional industries, the margins are evenly spread across far more services areas and the growth prospects for SMEs are significant.

Living Labs Global agrees with the concept of creating lead markets to overcome the commercialisation gap. Jakob Rasmussen explained other ways in which he was offering an improved service to his customers and stakeholders, such as the organisation of matchmaking summits and the implementation of a showcase portal. He closed by emphasising six value dimensions: • Dynamic urban environments; • Innovation Drivers; • Good governance structures; • Entrepreneurial culture; • Development of a place brand; • Value networks.

Exhibit 10: The Six Value Dimensions

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In response to questions from the audience, Jakob Rasmussen pointed out that Living Labs Global was supported by large companies, which were interested in further technical development and benefitted from his organisation’s new approach. The choice of companies was relatively easy, and the main characteristics were to be very special and to have global possibilities when commercialising the product or service.

Gareth Jones, the Coordinator for the Eco-innovative cluster partnership for growth and internationalisation (EcoCluP), then provided an overview of the activities of UK CEED, where he is Project Manager. He also explained the UK definition of the low carbon sector, which is split into three categories – environmental; renewable energy; and emerging low carbon. These three categories enable strong links to be made with many other industrial sectors. After focusing on the activities of the EnviroCluster, in Peterborough UK, he explained how the EcoCluP was positioned and the objectives, which its members had for the project.

Exhibit 11: EcoCluP in a glance

The last formal contribution was made by Linda Karlsson and Philip Stankovski from the Mobile Heights communication cluster initiative in Southern Sweden. Linda Karlsson outlined how Mobile Heights brings together world-class organisations from industry and academia and also institutions from the public sector. Member organisations work to establish Southern Sweden as a leading region, at international level. The focus of this work is on research, innovation and entrepreneurship in mobile communications. Mobile Heights offers access to a dynamic environment that enables organisations and their employees to cross-fertilise perspectives and ideas that will promote innovation and growth. In the second part of the presentation, Philip Stankovski spoke about the organisation of Mobile Heights and its task forces. These task forces were used to promote synergetic effects between the services, embedded software applications and system design sectors, whilst putting the central focus on services innovation.

The Main Issues Raised in Discussion Michael Hack, Director of the European Chemical Regions Network, GĂśran Lindqvist, Project Manager at the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness in Sweden, Mara Tumiati, Coordinator of the ABCEurope project, and Fabio Iraldo, Associate Professor of Management and Innovation at the University of Pisa, were the panellists for the discussion.

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They generally agreed on the importance of facilitating an exchange between clusters and regional authorities throughout Europe to prepare for internationalisation and the entering of new markets. Clusters or cluster organisations will have to stimulate companies and entities to work together to create a breeding ground for innovation and spillover effects within, and around, clusters. Fabio Iraldo felt that it will be crucial for new clusters to work alongside supply chains and with companies that are willing and able to communicate with each other and also to use external support to improve this communication. Gรถran Lindquist stated that new industries and clusters emerge within the gaps that have been left by old clusters and that this has always been the pattern for the evolution of the economy. However, in an increasingly globalised economy, it is increasingly important for successful clusters to combine dynamic local interaction with a global influx of ideas and resources and an outflow to global markets.

In conclusion, Leonidas Karapiperis said that even though the mechanisms through which new trends emerge may be the same, what is radically new is the rapid rate of change.

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3. Question and Answer Sessions The three Questions and Answer Sessions provided an opportunity for Europe INNOVA stakeholders to discuss the most frequently asked questions about outstanding issues.

3.1. Q&A Session 1: KIS 100 Club of Young Entrepreneurs: the New Approach The main objective of the session was to introduce the new regional approach of the KIS 100 Club of Young Entrepreneurs. This was presented by William Stevens, CEO and Founder of Europe Unlimited and the coordinator of KISPLATFORM, the horizontal action of the KIS-IP. When launching the KIS 100 CLUB, the KISPLATFORM had aimed to bring together the most interesting and successful companies in Europe that had high growth potential in the area of Knowledge Intensive Services (KIS). The club provides its members with an opportunity to network with their peers and to develop new cooperative partnerships with businesses from other sectors and markets. It also offers a forum to discuss common regulatory, technological and organisational issues. At present, the club has 66 members to whom it offers visibility and broad recognition but, from now on, the club would like to focus on a regional approach.

However, there had been some difficulties with maintaining the interest of the KIS companies in remaining involved at the European level activities and therefore, the original ideas had to be reviewed.

In order to gain more regional visibility, the KIS-IP launched a call for the expression of interest for the selection of regional partners to co-organise four Regional Events on supporting knowledge intensive services. The call was addressed to regional innovation agencies and development agencies, chambers of commerce, and other public or private innovation support providers like cluster organisations and incubators that assist the knowledge intensive services companies in their regions. They have been invited to express their interest in becoming local partners and hosts of a Regional Event to be organised in cooperation with the KISPLATFORM consortium. One aim is to showcase 9-12 local KIS companies, by presenting their operations and innovations via videos at these Regional Events. Another aim is to show what the regions are doing to support innovation and growth of such companies and discuss such mechanisms with peers from other regions. At the end of each Regional Event, one of these companies will be selected to receive an award and thus, boost its visibility at the annual partnering event of KIS-IP. The four Regional Events will be held between January 2010 and February 2011.

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Exhibit 12: The regional KIS 100 events in brief

Click here to view the interview of William Stevens.

The Main Issues Raised in Discussion In general, the idea of the regional approach and the staging of Regional Events were welcomed. It was also agreed that success stories in the KIS area were needed to promote the engagement of SMEs in European-level programmes and there was strong support for the use of video as the communications medium.

With regard to the old KIS 100 Club concept, it was felt that more concrete goals were needed and there were also questions about the sectoral focus of the club, which might be seen as being limited. Also, the opinion was expressed that the concept of a KIS company wasn’t well-known or understood by some local authorities. Fortunately, many of these aspects will be taken into account in the new approach of the KIS 100 Club.

In the new approach, the regions will have the opportunity and power to promote their own local companies and this is an opportunity not only for the companies but also for the ecosystems in which they operate. When selecting the co-host regions of the Regional Events, one criterion will be ease of access to the companies. The second criterion will be to select regions where there is an enthusiastic atmosphere and environment that boosts the competitiveness of the local KIS companies. Finally, the third criterion will be the ability to attract a wide audience to the event and gain high public visibility in the local media. Attracting media attention will also help KIS companies to obtain recognition amongst potential investors and venture capitalists.

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3.2. Q&A Session 2: Europe INNOVA Communication and Promotion This session discussed the new communication strategy established by DG Enterprise and Industry and the Europe INNOVA Communications team. New communication tools have been developed to communicate and promote the role of the Europe INNOVA initiative and to stimulate debates on innovation support policies at European, national and regional levels. During the session, three sets of guidelines were presented dealing with Communication, Visual Identity and Portal Use. These guidelines were meant to assist the new partnerships in their daily communications activities.

Evangelia Koundouraki, Communication and Information Officer from the Communications Unit at DG Enterprise and Industry, clarified the concepts of ‘data’ and ‘communication.’ Whereas data was facts and information, communication was more about being involved in sharing information and initiating a dialogue between citizens and stakeholders. She stressed the importance of giving a high profile to communications activities to ensure that stakeholders are informed about innovation support policies and, more particularly, about the role of Europe INNOVA. Her presentation was reinforced by a video entitled ‘In Two Minds’ that introduced the new Europe INNOVA Communications Guidelines and provided some entertaining lessons on how to, and how not to, communicate.

Jacques Viseur then outlined the new communication strategy and the tools that had been made available for the partnerships in the second generation of Europe INNOVA. He underlined that “one of the grand challenge of this second generation is to help projects and their partnerships to get involved and to use the new communication tools and supports.” He also pointed to the three key objectives of Europe INNOVA which were: • To communicate about the role of the new European Innovation Platforms and partnerships; • To promote new tools and instruments for innovation support across the areas of knowledge intensive services, cluster cooperation and eco-innovation; • To stimulate debates on innovation support policies at the European, national and regional levels.

Exhibit 13: The new architecture of the Europe INNOVA Initiative

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In order to promote the work and the results of the Europe INNOVA partnerships, the Europe INNOVA Communications team has developed tools such as the Sparks Newsletter, the Europe INNOVA web site (www.europe-innova.eu), leaflets and fact sheets. It also organises a number of European events and workshops. Finally, the team has produced the following guidelines that are available on-line on each project’s workspace: • Communication Guidelines: giving practical advice on generating effective publicity for your activities/ instruments and delivering your message to the right target audience(s); • Visual Identity Guidelines: providing guidelines on the graphic formats of Europe INNOVA platforms for use in different types of communications outputs to ensure a professional image that corresponds to the world of business and industry; • Portal User Guidelines: facilitating the use of the new Europe INNOVA portal and introducing the collaborative workspace.

It was also noted that a specific colour and logo had been allocated to each partnership for its communications activities. Jacques Viseur invited each partner to register on the web site www.europe-innova.eu and emphasised the importance of reading the Portal User Guidelines that were available on-line in the ‘help’ section.

Paul Ormerod, Director eUconnect Ltd, then explained the work of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Exchange (EIX), which is a social network that has been created by the partners of the ACHIEVE MORE project on a Ning platform.

The objectives of this platform are: to exchange good practice in leading edge incubation and clustering; to use innovative coaching tools proven to accelerate start-up growth; and to experiment with new models for seed funds.

The EIX partnership now spans 27 countries and consists of 73 organisations and its Social Network can be accessed at http://eandix.ning.com. It is a living example of how social networks can help in disseminating tools, better practices and the proofs of concept developed by the partnerships in the Europe INNOVA Initiative.

Finally, Evangelia Koundouraki recalled the key principles of communication which had been discussed, namely: • Involvement; • Elaboration; • Sharing innovation knowledge with larges circles and targeted audiences.

She stressed the importance of a step by step approach to building new concepts and new tools, with each member of the Europe INNOVA partnerships being involved and sharing experiences. She concluded that “thanks to advanced technologies and collaborative workspaces, it is now possible to build strong collaboration and develop better practices.”

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3.3. Q&A Session 3: Project Management Agnieszka Zelaskiewicz Finance and Contract Officer from the ‘Support for Innovation’ Unit at DG Enterprise and Industry introduced the agenda for the session which included: pre-financing; interim payment requirements; payment schemes; amendments; ex-post audits; and administrative issues. She also mentioned that the financial team in the Unit had almost doubled in size recently, from three to five members, and should be able to offer a smoother payment process in the future.

The signing of the grant agreement and the delivery of supplementary documents are preconditions for pre-financing.

Pre-financing will be paid to the Project Coordinator within 45 days of these preconditions being fulfilled. Distribution of funding to beneficiaries has to happen within 30 days.

Interim payments are based on a periodic activity report and an interim financial report which have to be delivered after the end of a reporting period - in most cases a period is of 9 months. The periodic activity report has to provide an overview of activities, a description of progress towards the project’s goals and various project management details.

The interim financial report is made up of the original interim financial statements or cost claims submitted and signed by each beneficiary, a consolidated interim financial statement, the distribution of the EC contribution per beneficiary, an overview of budgeted and actual costs and various supporting documents.

Every second reporting period, if less than 12 months, the interim financial report has to be accompanied by an audit certificate. If the reporting period is 12 months or more then the audit certificate has to be delivered every reporting period. The interim financial report has to obey the standards for direct and indirect cost eligibility. For example, Indirect Cost = 30% of total personnel, Project Management = 10% maximum and VAT is not eligible. The reports for the interim payments have to be submitted within 45 days of the end of the reporting period. The Commission has to approve the report and make the resulting payment within 90 days of the report´s reception. The approval and payment procedures can be suspended if further clarification is required. In this case, the Project Coordinator has to answer within 30 days of the Commission´s notification.

Requests for an amendment of the contract have to be sent to the Commission in good time before the proposed amendment is to take effect, as mismanagement of amendments may lead to payment delays. The Commission should, in any case, be informed of any changes to the grant agreement.

The results of ex-post audits, which may be in favour of the beneficiary or the Commission, will be released in the final ex-post audit report.

Agnieszka Zelaskiewicz reminded everyone that the Project Coordinator represents the consortium, manages the grant agreement, consolidates the reports and streamlines the correspondence with the Commission. The reporting guidenotes and checklists will be distributed to the Project Coordinators, in January 2010. The deadline for the submission of the next reports for the current contracts, which involve grant agreements with four periods, will be in mid-July 2010.

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4. Closing Plenary Session The last day of the 2009 Annual Partnering Event began with a short video documenting the participants’ impressions of the event, as well as their aspirations for the future of their projects. To set the scene for the final discussions, Christophe Guichard, Policy Officer from the ‘Support for Innovation’ Unit at DG Enterprise and Industry, outlined the main objectives for the session.

4.1. Consulting on the Challenges of Innovation Christophe Guichard also presented the rationale behind the public consultation on the effectiveness of innovation support in EU. This consultation was inspired by the wish to better understand what needed to be done to improve the effectiveness of this support.

Exhibit 14: Challenges of Innovation Support

The challenges identified in the context of the consultation included the risk of duplication of efforts between the different levels (EU, national and regional) of innovation support and the perception of companies that public innovation support has a low impact on their innovation activities. In the light of these concerns, the three main objectives of the public consultations were to: • Improve the effectiveness of innovation support, by better addressing the needs of innovative SMEs; • Better prioritise the actions to be launched at the Community level; • Provide guidance to the Members States to help them re-assess their innovation support mechanisms.

The results of the public consultations were analysed and subsequently used in preparing a recent Commission Staff Working Paper ‘Making public support for innovation in the EU more effective: Lessons learnt from a public consultation for action at Community level’, which was published officially, on 9 September 2009.

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Eurico Correia Neves, CEO and Founder of INNOVA Europe Ltd, provided an informal commentary on the main results of the public consultation. In terms of robustness, the sample included responses from 792 companies and 428 stakeholders. In his view, this compared very favourably with the level of responses to the recent consultations on the Small Business Act, in 2008, and on the ERA Green Paper, in 2007. It was also noted that a large proportion of the respondents came from the Enterprise Europe Network. This provided a certain degree of quality assurance, as there was a predominance of responses from EU specialists. In the discussion it was also pointed out, however, that this introduced a certain bias to the results, especially in relation to opinions about initiatives that do not specifically target innovation intermediaries. In the future, more efforts should be made to reach out to other innovation stakeholders.

One of the key findings to emerge was that companies receiving public support apparently did not view it as being instrumental to their innovation activities. There was also a gap between what enterprises expected to get as innovation support and what they actually received. In addition, four out of every five innovation services providers considered that there was a need to improve existing support mechanisms. Despite different points of view on the interpretation of the results, there was a clear need to increase the effectiveness of public support for innovation.

According to Enrico Correia Neves, innovation support in the EU needs to be based on a clear and widely accepted policy rationale in order to be credible and effective.

A first analysis of the results of the public consultation was carried out by a specialised group of innovation practitioners during the PRO INNO Europe速 Annual Meeting last May. The views of companies and institutions on the role of the EU in supporting innovation and the impact of the economic crisis were converted into provoking findings that could stimulate future debate on innovation support.

Exhibit 15: Key lessons of the public consultations

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4.2. Renewing innovation Jørgen Rosted, Development Director at FORA, presented the main findings of a recent report ‘A new nature of innovation,’ which had been prepared as a contribution to a new OECD innovation strategy to be presented in spring 2010. He identified several drivers of innovation - co-creation, global knowledge sourcing, collaborative networks, global challenges and public sector challenges, especially the pressure on the public sector to create new business opportunities. His opinion was that to make a difference, companies must listen to, and dialogue with, customers. They also needed to be transparent, giving the customers access to all kinds of information platforms and company systems and evaluating the risk with them.

According to Jørgen Rosted, a new nature of innovation was emerging. The new nature of innovation differentiates innovations today from the innovation that had taken place during the industrial era. Four drivers would gradually transform the manner in which companies innovate and for each driver new innovation principles would appear. The four drivers were: • Co-creating value with customers and tapping knowledge about users; • Global knowledge sourcing and collaborative networks; • Global challenges as driver of innovation; • Public sector challenges as driver of innovation.

Exhibit 16: Innovation Drivers and Principles

The four drivers illustrate important new trends or areas where something new is emerging at company level. Until recently, these trends have developed on a small scale within single companies or niche markets. What is new is that more and more companies are reacting to the changing conditions for businesses and are beginning to innovate in these new ways. In other words, they are changing their strategies and business models. No single company will react to all of the trends. However, it is believed that if companies want to remain innovative and competitive, they will have to adapt to today’s business environment in one way or another.

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An attempt has been made to identify new forms of innovation policy, based on studies of new innovation policies in leading OECD countries and a dialogue with leading international innovation experts and policymakers. The new nature of innovation is expected to have far-reaching policy implications. However, governments could address the new nature of innovation by focusing on four new policy areas, namely: • Building knowledge and competences for a new nature of innovation to flourish; • Creating new platforms; • Introducing smart regulation; • Using intelligent demand.

Reacting to questions from the audience, Jørgen Rosted agreed that the new trends emerge at different speeds and in various forms in different EU countries and regions. This diversity is one of the challenges for policy design and delivery.

4.3. Developing a Baltic Sea Region (BSR) Strategy Finally, a presentation on the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) Strategy was made by Anders Lindholm, a Programme Officer from DG Regional Policy. He underlined the importance of scaling up and focusing on the introduction of novel approaches into mainstream programmes through a top-down strategy. This was achieved by the BSR INNO-Net on Clusters, which contributed substantially to the preparation of the overall strategy.

The EU Baltic Sea Strategy was developed on the invitation of the European Council of December 2007. It was the first example of an integrated strategy being prepared by the European Commission for a group of Member States facing common challenges and opportunities. These Member States also had a strong desire to cooperate more intensively and were willing to see the European Institutions facilitate the process. The Baltic Sea Region is shared by eight EU Member States and Russia, each with its own priorities, economic imperatives and political concerns. In total, the Baltic Sea Region is home to almost one hundred million people including a fifth of the EU’s population.

The accession of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania meant that eight of the nine Baltic countries could benefit from free movement of goods and services and share common legislation in addition to a largely, common heritage. This physical and cultural proximity made the Baltic Sea Region, an interesting place in which to test this transnational approach and the resulting strategy was an important first step towards the regional implementation of the Integrated Maritime Policy.

The strategy has two main elements - a Communication and an Action Plan. The Communication sets out the most important aspects of the strategy and places it in a wider context. The Communication also makes proposals on how the strategy should be implemented and governed. Whilst, the Action Plan, covers 15 priority areas and proposes a set of activities for each. These are complemented by examples of flagship projects such as ‘Create Marine Protected Areas’ and ‘Create a Baltic Sea Fund for Innovation and Research.’ The implementation of these actions and projects will require improved cooperation between Member States and stakeholders, for example, in the way that EU or national legislation is implemented. No additional funding is foreseen, as the strategy focuses on coordinating and strengthening the use of existing financing instruments.

In terms of governance, it is intended that the policy orientation will be decided by the European Council, that the coordination, monitoring and reporting will be undertaken by the European Commission and that the actually measures will be carried out by the Member States and other stakeholders in the Baltic Sea Region. In case of any problems about responsibilities arising, the Commission will play the role of facilitator. All the relevant stakeholders and authorities will also be consulted once a year in an Annual Forum on the implementation of the strategy. The BSR Strategy is a pioneer initiative, and it has recently been announced that a similar approach will be followed for the Danube regions in 2010.

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4.4. Voting on a New Mission Statement for Europe INNOVA A voting session was organised on the Europe INNOVA Mission Statement, which was introduced by Mette Quinn.

She stressed that one of main objectives of the discussion was to help clarify the ‘raison d’être’ of Europe INNOVA. She explained that, in a constantly changing world, it was essential to re-think its mission statement and underlined the fact that “Europe INNOVA is not a talk shop, as it must produce practical measures and approaches and the final delivery of these services should be left to the relevant organisations.”

Electronic voting had been organised for the participants, to enable them to express their preferences for inclusion in the future mission statement. The mission statement was addressed from four perspectives and separate voting took place on each of the four sets of options. The perspectives were: • The focus and objectives of Europe INNOVA and the challenges it should address; • The stakeholders of Europe INNOVA; • The approach that should be applied in implementing Europe INNOVA; and also • The ways to implement an evidence-based approach in innovation support.

The results of the voting are shown below.

In addition, a panel discussion was organised to provide some immediate reactions to the results of the electronic voting. The panel included Angelos Manglis, President and Managing Director, Atlantis Consulting SA in Greece, Lucia Steel, Coordinator of EU projects at Clusterland Upper Austria, Eva Diedrichs, Consultant at AT Kearney in Germany, and Andrea di Anselmo, Vice President of META Group in Italy.

Exhibit 17: Voting results on the first mission statement of Europe INNOVA.

The vast majority of participants in the first vote were in favour of Europe INNOVA becoming a laboratory for the development, testing and promotion of new tools and instruments in support of innovation by supporting all forms of innovation and taking into account the great societal challenges of today.

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Exhibit 18: Voting results on the second mission statement of Europe INNOVA

The voting suggested that Europe INNOVA activities should be driven by innovation agencies and other public or private innovation support providers that are interested in working in partnership in search of new forms of innovation support at European level.

Exhibit 19: Voting results on the third mission statement of Europe INNOVA

Overall, the voting indicated that Europe INNOVA should follow a ‘strategic approach’ by identifying which new innovation support mechanisms needed to be developed at European level. However, almost as many voters preferred applying a ‘bottom-up’ approach.

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Exhibit 20: Voting results on the forth mission statement of Europe INNOVA

The outcomes of the fourth and final vote demonstrated that Europe INNOVA should follow an ‘evidence-based’ approach in support of innovation, building upon existing research and analysis and better disseminating the results to public funding agencies and private institutions supporting entrepreneurial innovation.

4.5. Closing Addresses Following the voting, Ioannis Perakis, Vice-President of the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce said, in his closing remarks, that it had been an honour for his chamber to host the 2009 Europe INNOVA Annual Partnering Event in the vibrant city of Heraklion.

The Partnering Event was officially closed by Reinhard Büscher, Head of Unit ‘Support for Innovation’ at DG Enterprise and Industry. He expressed the view that the Europe INNOVA Partnering Event 2009 had provided an opportunity to listen to some excellent interventions, discuss specific aspects in smaller teams and share experiences in a more informal way. He believed that there was a need to think more about how the challenges of today could be better addressed through innovation. In his view, the main directions of change of Europe INNOVA were the search for practical solutions in response to the ‘grand societal challenges’ by the development and uptake of novel concepts in support of a broader concept of innovation. Europe INNOVA would have to demonstrate that it can have a real impact.

In order to roll out the activities on a larger scale, the levels of aspirations needed to be higher and a genuine impact could only be achieved by seeking synergies between different policy instruments and actors. He made a strong plea for a ‘new deal’ between regional, national and European innovation support activities, wherever they could be streamlined towards common objectives. Reinhard Büscher concluded that “the enemy of the good is the search for perfection. There is no justification in delaying what can be done now, whilst, at the same time, thinking about the next step.”

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5. Side events 5.1. Informal Get-togethers The Europe INNOVA Annual Partnering Event (APE) started with four warm-up meetings or ‘Get-togethers.’

The Knowledge Intensive Services Innovation Platform (KIS-IP) is an initiative of Europe INNOVA that seeks to develop better innovation support instruments and tools for innovation in the services sector. For KIS-IP, it was an excellent opportunity to introduce its four new projects in the areas of digital media, creative industries, mobile services and green construction and to help them draw lessons from the experience of its existing projects. One of the key issues that emerged was how best to attract investors for knowledge intensive services start-ups. In the context of the current financial crisis, Jenny Tooth, Business Development Director, GLE Growth Capital, UK believed that “it has been increasingly recognised that companies, especially from the services sector, face enormous difficulties in gaining access to funding for innovative but risky undertakings.” It was noted that in order to address this market failure, the possibility of launching a new financial instrument at European level, with the assistance of the European Innovation Fund, was currently being discussed.

Another meeting considered the topic of Excellence in Cluster Management and sought to answer the following questions: Why do we need cluster management excellence? Would a quality label for cluster management excellence add value? Who would be interested in cluster management training and what should such training include? The view of Emiliano Duch, the European Cluster Management Excellence Coordinator, from the IESE Business School in Spain, was that “current knowledge comes mainly from learning-by-doing and so there is room for a more integrated approach.” The outcomes of the discussion inspired the European Cluster Excellence Initiative launched under PRO INNO Europe® to set up an approach for the quality labelling of cluster management, and develop training materials in order to help cluster managers achieve high levels of excellence in their duties and success in their peer-assessments.

The meeting on Intelligence of Innovation sought to identify existing statistical data on innovation performance and to discuss how to make best use of these facts and figures. In essence, the participants called for preliminary results to be presented as early as possible so that they could be fed into policy discussions at the appropriate time. They also felt that it was important to exploit all possible synergies between the different projects, which were collecting and analysing indicators. It was also necessary to check and compare findings at EU level with national data and vice versa so that a better understanding could be gained of the most relevant approaches to the measurement of innovation.

Establishing a common definition of new sectors that were not captured by the existing categorisation, gathering new evidence on clusters and regions and introducing a foresight dimension were considered to be priorities for action.

The fourth and final parallel meeting invited public agencies to exploit the synergies between the Europe INNOVA Innovation Platforms and other European initiatives, notably the INNO-Partnering Forum established under the PRO INNO Europe® initiative. During the meeting, it became clear that the INNO-Partnering Forum could not only play a role in pre-testing the concepts of Europe INNOVA tools but also in expanding the Europe INNOVA community through the sharing of information and feedback and the strengthening of the involvement of public innovation agencies.

5.2. Official Opening and Welcome Reception The Official Opening of the Europe INNOVA Annual Partnering Event brought together some 150 people, on Sunday evening, at the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce and Industry (HCC). The Chair and Moderator of the event was Lisbeth Kirk, a journalist and the Founder and Managing Editor of EUobserver.

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The President of the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Nikitas Dolapsakis, welcomed the participants to Crete. He explained that the island had developed from an economy, which had very little industrial activity and a limited market for products and services, into a dynamic region with a large market that serves both its visitors and the surrounding Mediterranean area. During recent years, the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce and Industry had taken a more active role at European level in representing, following up and promoting industry, manufacture, trade and services.

Reinhard Büscher, Head of Unit, ‘Support for Innovation’ at DG Enterprise and Industry, opened the event on behalf of the European Commission. He thanked the Heraklion Chamber of Commerce and Industry for hosting and coorganising the APE, which offered a great opportunity to learn and to create new tools for innovation on the beautiful and hospitable island of Crete. He reminded the audience of the common goals for Europe INNOVA and said that “Europe needs better innovation support mechanisms in order to better assist enterprises in their efforts of bringing new ideas faster to the market. What they currently get in this respect is not good enough.”

There were also speeches by Serafeim Tsokas, General Secretary of Regional Authority of Crete, Giorgos Alexakis, President of the Prefectural Board of Heraklion, and Michalis Perisinakis, Vice-Mayor of Heraklion. Together they provided a brief introduction to the economic structure of the island. Despite the volatile economic conditions, the region has boosted its scientific and technological development and has tried to overcome the obstacles that the economy was facing. It was hoped that this Annual Partnering Event would increase Crete’s recognition throughout Europe and open up opportunities for the island through trans-regional cooperation.

After the opening ceremony at the HCC, there was an evening’s entertainment in the nearby, newly-opened, museum in the Bethlehem Gate. The Bethlehem Gate is one of the original seven gates or bastions in the Venetian Walls of Heraklion. Participants had the opportunity to wander around inside and, at the same time, see the ‘El Greco: Return home’ exhibition. This exhibition included examples of the work of the famous Cretan artist Domenicos Theotokopoulos, also known as El Greco, who was born in Heraklion, in 1541. Under the bright, starry sky, the participants enjoyed a delicious finger buffet and the company of both new and old acquaintances.

5.3. Innovation Tours The Crete Wine Industry: Tradition meets Innovation and Clustering The optional innovation tour on Monday evening focused on the efforts of the winemaking sector in Crete to transform itself into a cluster and to enhance its innovative capabilities. The participants visited the Miliarakis Winery, which is based in the village of Peza. This is located in the most important wine-producing area of Crete, which is 17 km south of Heraklion. At the beginning of the visit, participants were introduced to the position of Cretan wine in the global context and to the vineyards of Crete today. The President of the Winemakers Association, Nikolaos Miliarakis and his Vice President, Bartholomeos Lyrarakis, provided an interesting and even self-deprecating overview of Cretan wines and winemaking. The vineyards of Crete include the oldest winery in the world in terms of continuity of production and there are now 50 wineries on the island. Crete produces 21 million bottles of wine every year which represents 1.3 % of the world’s production.

The reputation of Cretan wines has not always been favourable and so a number of winemaking firms established a cluster to promote public awareness of the value and quality of the products of Cretan viniculture. The overall intention of the cluster is to establish a recognised and certified label for Crete’s Quality Wine. Also, to support sustainable rural development, the cluster created the ‘Cretan Wine Road,’ in 2007. This is an integrated web of routes covering the entire wine-producing zone of the island and this is promoting wine-tourism as an additional attraction for visitors to Crete.

The cluster has also supported and promoted the products of its firms through its participation in research projects,

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events, workshops and international wine and spirits competitions. Through all these activities, the winemakers in Crete have been able to seize their opportunities in European and national markets and to strengthen and support the modernisation and competitiveness of their companies. These results demonstrate the remarkable progress that the cluster has made.

At the end of the tour, there was a wine tasting in the Hall of the Milliarakis, which also housed an exhibition of old winery machines pumps and bottling machines and a traditional stone-made winepress. Further information about the Cretan wine cluster can be found at www.winesofcrete.gr

Going FORTH After the formal conclusion of the Annual Partnering Event, participants had the opportunity to visit the Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH), which is one of the largest research centres in Greece. Alkiviades Payatakes, Chairman of the Board of Directors of FORTH, explained that FORTH was established in 1983, and has grown to become one of the top European research centres. It works under the supervision of the General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Hellenic Ministry of Education, Lifelong Learning and Religious Affairs. FORTH has seven research institutes throughout Greece, employing a total of 1152 members of staff, in Heraklion, Rethymnon, Patras and Ioannina.

FORTH currently participates in 402 projects covering major areas of scientific, social and economic interest and operates with a total budget of € 121.4 million. In the last part of his presentation, Prof Payatakes introduced some of the spin-off companies of FORTH such as Nanochronus Logic, Advent, NANOthinx and FORTH Photonics SA.

The Member Institutes of FORTH • • • • • • •

Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Institute of Computer Sciences Institute of Applied And Computational Mathematics Institute for Mediterranean Studies Institute of Chemical Engineering and High Temperature Chemical Processes Biomedical Research Institute

Then, Apostolos Dimitriadis, Technology Transfer Consultant, spoke about the PRAXI / HELP FORWARD Network, which is administered by FORTH. It has offered technology transfer, brokerage services to Greek companies and research institutions, since 1991. PRAXI is also a National Contact Point for FP7 and a member of the Enterprise Europe Network.

The PRAXI / HELP-FORWARD Network, is a non-profit private organisation and receives its funding from the European Commission and from the services it provides to its clients. It was elected as Best Innovation Relay Centre in Europe for 2002 and has had an important role in the creation and internationalisation of more than 40% of the spin-offs from research centres and universities, in Greece.

Following the general presentations on FORTH and PRAXI, some practical examples were showcased. The spin-off company Nanochronus Logic Inc. was introduced by its CTO, Christos Sotiriou. He explained that the company was established in 2006, through seed funding from FORTH, and has bases in both Heraklion and San Jose, California. The company focuses on the commercialisation of research results in the field of asynchronous nanotechnologies. By using the most important technology of Nanochronous Logic, which is its patented ‘de-synchronisation’ technology, microchips consume less power, operate faster and produce fewer electromagnetic emissions.

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Konstantinos Zekentes from the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser highlighted its latest developments in the areas of SiC materials and SiC-based microwave diodes. He explained that silicon carbide is an important wide bandgap semiconductor with superior properties in thermal conductivity and breakdown voltage. For these reasons, it is deployed in the development of high power, high temperature devices and harsh environment sensors.

George Papadakis, from the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology focused on its recent achievements in acoustic wave technology for studying bio-molecular interactions. The acoustic wave sensor systems are designed for the investigation of bio-molecules such as proteins or DNA and will have significant applications in gene therapy and drug screening.

The innovation tour concluded with a presentation by Irini Fundulaki, from the Institute of Computer Sciences, on the activities and importance of the Greek W3C Office. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community in which member organisations, the full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards.

Led by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, W3C’s mission is to assist the web to realise its full potential. The World Wide Web Consortium has established 16 offices throughout the world, one of which is located in Greece. This office has been hosted by FORTH-ICS since its launch, in1998.

5.4. Gala Dinner After a long day’s discussion about innovation support, the participants were able to take a break and enjoy Cretan hospitality at a tavern in the picturesque village of Archanes. Dimitris Frangoulakis, the Mayor of Archanes, welcomed the participants very warmly and provided them with an overview of the history of Archanes. Archanes had been a traditional wine-making village but in recent decades it has managed to transform itself into a well-known destination for agro-tourism that champions the concepts of eco-innovation and sustainable development.

He said that “Archanes is an excellent example of how European funds can be used to promote local rural development.

The European, national and regional funds were of great help in the speedy development of our village, which now has many fully restored sandstone houses and other buildings, which date right back to the Turkish period.”

The participants then sampled a wide variety of traditional, home-made food and a good selection of Cretan wines.

They were also entertained during the dinner by a local folk group, which encouraged them to prove, or improve, their dancing skills.

Au revoir

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