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Good Practices in Regional Innovation
Introduction
A great number of measures currently exists to directly or indirectly support innovation in Europe, including measures supporting technology transfer, incubation and access to finance. The INNO-Policy TrendChart currently identifies more than 400 horizontal and specific measures in support of innovation. These measures play a key role to help organizations to innovate better and faster, by addressing specific market and system failures hindering European companies, and in particular SMEs, to fully exploit their innovation potential.
In order to accelerate the catch-up processes in Europe it is important that lessons are learnt from such measures, in particular as regards their effectiveness, i.e. how well the measures are adapted to the local targets and how they succeed in converting inputs into outputs.
Summary of project research
A group of researchers at Staffordshire University Business School are the UK partners in the GPrix project, which is one of three research projects designed to evaluate best practice in innovation support measures, especially for SMEs. While the other projects have focussed on fast-growing SMEs (the so-called “gazelles”) and SME research and development, the GPrix project focussed on SME innovation and innovation support in traditional manufacturing industry.
The project investigated how well small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are supported in developing and implementing innovations in processes and products. GPRIX (Good Practices in Regional Innovation) - the purpose of the research is to identify the "X" factor that makes support programmes useful for SMEs.
The effectiveness of innovation support measures can be evaluated using the following two concepts; additionality and composition. Additionality refers to how much extra private innovation and Research and Development (R&D) will be performed resulting from public support, while composition refers to which R&D and innovation projects are stimulated.
Sectors targeted are traditional sectors including the automotive, textiles, leather, ceramics, mechanical/metallurgy and food sectors. The GPrix project assessed a set of regional innovation support measures in a representative set of European regions characterized by a large number of SMEs from traditional sectors.
Project impact
This research will inform recommendations on best practice. The end result will be more effective and user-friendly support programmes for SMEs, and these should eventually benefit many firms in North Staffordshire.
The GPrix team is now in a position to report its main findings and recommendations.
These will be of particular interest to:
• SMEs thinking of engaging with innovation support programmes – such as
Knowledge Transfer Programmes, Innovation Vouchers and UKTI schemes;
• public-sector colleagues concerned with the design and delivery of support
programmes; and, more widely,
• anyone concerned with helping SMEs to innovate as part of the broad agenda
of “rebalancing” the UK economy towards manufacturing.
The team held a "validation event" on 23rd February to report their findings and recommendations asking comments, criticisms and suggestions to take to the final conference in Brussels. From this, final recommendations will be included in the final Report, which will be part of the evidence base used to allocate future EU funding for SME innovation. Against the background of much diminished domestic funding, the team hopes to influence EU policy to the advantage of SMEs in traditional manufacturing industries, which continue to be hugely important sources of wealth creation, exports and employment in the West Midlands.
The evidence base for the recommendations includes in-depth interviews
with programme managers, survey responses from nearly 100 SMEs in traditional
manufacturing industries in the West Midlands and detailed case studies
of innovation and innovation support in 10 of these firms. There is also
a wider evidence base of well over 300 survey returns and 70 case studies
from 7 European regions, each of which is similar to the West Midlands in
being the location for substantial ceramics, leather, textiles, metal fabrication,
and auto industries.
Click here for further details of the event.
Project partners
Overall Project lead: Pedro Soutinho, Inova, Portugal
Staffordshire University Staff Lead: Professor Geoff Pugh
g.t.pugh@staffs.ac.uk 01782 294092
Dr David Douglas, (Business School) d.j.douglas@staffs.ac.uk
01782 294190
Jon Fairburn (IESR) jon.fairburn@staffs.ac.uk
01782 294094
Amanda Hughes (Psychology) a.c.hughes@staffs.ac.uk
01782 295741
Dr Ian Jackson (Business School) i.jackson@staffs.ac.uk
01782 294211
Ian Wilson (Business School) i.a.wilson@staffs.ac.uk
01782 294185
Technical Support and website: Tom Ward t.ward@staffs.ac.uk
01782 294902
Other partners:
United Nations University MERIT, Netherlands Fraunhofer, Germany
ENEA, Italy
ESTER Technopole, France
University Polytechnic, Valencia, Spain
A Google map of the partners with links to their websites
Project timeline: The project started in December 2009 and finished in December 2011.
This project is collaborating with two other EU projects MAPPER SME and RAPPORT
Project website www.gprix.eu
Centre for Applied Business Research www.staffs.ac.uk/cabr