The innovation capacity of regions and firms depends on their ability to create, diffuse and exploit knowledge from outside the region through the regional innovation system. Public innovation intermediaries play a crucial role in providing innovation support measures,creating partnerships and finding innovative solutions.
This was the starting point in 2008 for developing the idea for an “Interregional Partnership Platform” between Valencia, Eszak-Alföld, Saxony-Anhalt and Latvia. Since the project has been approved, the financial and economic landscape in Europe has dramatically changed.
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis it became clear that most Member States were directly hit by the economic shock with a sharp economic downturn and therefore being forced to increase public expenditure leading to higher public debt.
It also became clear that, due to significant differences between the economic competitiveness of the Euro-zone countries leading to trade imbalances, thereby forcing Eurozone countries to take concerted action to safeguard the Monetary Union and to increase their austerity measures.
These changes also had a significant impact on the regions:
- resulting in a slow-down of economic growth,
- the reduction of public expenditures
- the Closure of companies and
- rising unemployment.
The European Union responded with the Europe 2020 strategy and a reinforced stability and growth pact towards these challenges by:
- setting new objectives towards intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth
- defining joint targets i. e. towards employment rates, expenditures in R&D, reducing the drop-out rate and increasing the share of the population with higher qualifications
- increasing financial and economic governance
- defining flagship initiatives to ensure a concerted effort in key policy areas, such as innovation, energy efficiency, industrial policy and the digital agenda
- developing a more coherent system of surveillance and conditionalities for the implementation of the stability and growth pact.
The recently published 5th report on economic, social and territorial cohesion4 has shown the extent of the challenge of the Europe 2020 target for the regions in Europe.
- Regarding the Europe 2020 target of increasing the share of population aged 30-34 with tertiary education of 40% Convergence regions are reaching in average only 23,5%, while
this share increases for transition regions to 31,9% and for richer regions to 35,4%. More than 1.9 Mio. persons need to enter higher education in the Convergence regions to meet this Europe 2020 target in the coming years!
- Regarding the target of reducing the rate early school leavers of people aged 18-24 to below 10% in 2020, the Convergence regions currently have a rate of 15.5% and Transition Regions a rate of 18.9%, which means that nearly 1,9 Mio. people of that age range in these regions need to stay in the education system to meet the Europe 2020 target.
- Regarding the target of spending 3% of the GDP for Research and Development by 2020, Convergence Regions are currently spending only 0.77% and Transition Regions in average only 0.97% of their GDP for this, and are therefore far below this benchmark. It is more than ever evident that increasing innovation, competitiveness and economic growth are essential to meeting these targets, also at the regional level.
A key contribution to these challenges can be made by releasing the potential of the Common Market of the European Union through strengthening co-operation at all levels.
This is where the IPP project aims to step in by improving the capacity of regions for innovation and by increasing the performance of innovation intermediaries at local and regional level in the partner regions in European co-operation and EU innovation programmes.
After the start-up phase of the programme the following policy recommendations can already be made:
- Internationalization policies in the participating regions are necessary to improve competitiveness, innovation and growth potential to contribute to reaching the Europe 2020 targets
- Internationalization at regional level should involve a holistic strategy taking into account the governmental level, the innovation intermediaries, business association, local and regional agencies, as well as research and development facilities, innovation centers and most importantly by the wider business and research environment
- Internationalization strategies should include a system of specific targets and benchmarks to gain a realistic impression about the necessary task and to define clear indicators to measure success of the policy
- Internationalization strategies should also involve all relevant actors in the regions to develop a clear division of tasks and responsibilities to avoid double work and misunderstandings
- Internationalization must be recognised as an essential element to improve innovation and competitiveness at the local and regional level
- The participation in European co-operation programmes must be seen as a way to complement local and regional competitiveness and innovation strategies
- The intermediary organizations to improve innovation and foster international co-operation must be supported to be able to carry out these tasks, and they must play an integral part in setting up a platform of exchange and co-operation of intermediary organizations in the four participating regions.
The IPP partners have therefore committed themselves to the following measures:
- Developing a joint benchmark to define the challenge and to measure the impact of internationalization strategies in the participating regions
- Involving innovation and internationalization intermediaries of the four participating regions in developing a joint co-operation platform by analyzing their experiences and future interests in interregional co-operation
- Addressing local authorities in particular to co-operate to improve the quality and the capacity for interregional co-operation on the ground
- Starting a strategy dialogue on the future role of interregional co-operation between the participating regions with regard to the future Territorial Co-operation Objective of Cohesion Policy and the next generation of Operational Programmes particularly focusing on the possibility of mainstreaming interregional co-operation
- Defining a limited number of pilot projects in the second stage of the IPP project to jointly implement good practices on coaching strategies and innovation services
- Developing an IT tool that will allow searching for EU programmes as well as parties, who are interested in the same topic by entering key words. This tool will be connected to the IPP website