APPLICATION FORM
ACRONYM:
POLITEC
TITLE OF THE PROYECT:
Transfer of good practice and methodology developed in Interreg 3B SUDOE (“AVANTEC Project”) for the elaboration of regional innovation policies in the sphere of cooperation between universities, businesses and public administrations.
TYPE OF INTERVENTION:
? Type 1: Regional Initiative Project
? Type 2: Capitalisation Project
Section 1: Project Summary
1.1. Acronym
POLITEC
1.2. Title
Shared application with methodology developed in Interreg 3B SUDOE (“AVANTEC
Project”) for the elaboration of regional innovation policies in the sphere of
technological cooperation between universities, businesses and public administrations.
1.3. Type of intervention
Type 2: Capitalisation Project
1.4. Duration
Start: beginning of: 07-2008
Closure: end of: 07-2010
TOTAL Nº MONTHS: 24
1.5. Sub-theme selected
Priority 1: Innovation and the Knowledge Economy
Sub-theme: Innovation, Research and Technology Development
1.6. Brief summary of the project
The POLITEC project consists of the transfer of good practice and methodology
developed in the AVANTEC project, whose activities were financed by Interreg 3B
SUDOE and successfully finished in 2007.
The good practice and methodology of the AVANTEC project are aimed at the
improvement of the interrelation between organisations in the regional innovation
systems (universities, businesses and public administrations), with the idea of providing
services and creating new companies. The POLITEC project, as a capitalisation project,
aims to transfer this good practice and methodology to the public authorities of the
regions participating in the project in order to establish regional innovation policies.
The strategic objective of the POLITEC project consists in providing the political
authorities of the participating regions with a common work tool in the sphere of
relations between universities, businesses and public administrations, which allows an
improved sharing of the innovation policies in this essential field for the efficient
performance of the respective regional innovation systems.
The basic activities of the POLITEC project are as follows:
1. Analysis of existing innovation policies in the participating regions in the field
of the interrelation between universities, businesses and public administrations
through direct contact with the political authorities.
2. Application of shared work procedures:
a. Presentation of available methodology: PATSI: “Procedure of Advanced
Technology Service Implementation” and POSTE: “Procedure of
Systematic Support to Technology Entrepreneurs”.
b. Training in the use of PATSI and POSTE methodology.
c. Fieldwork in order to obtain data.
d. Construction of indicator system.
e. Personal interaction with the political authorities of each participating
region for the interpretation of the indicator system.
3. Public presentation of the results of the project in seminars, conferences and
other events, with the participation of public authorities, key stakeholders and
members of the project consortium from the various participating regions.
4. Launch of diffusion initiatives: Web page, press, radio.
5. Elaboration of action plans for the support of political authorities in the
orientation of the innovation policies of the participating regions.
As main project results it is expected that an adequate transfer of good practice will be
reached, leading to the drawing up of action plans in each participating region, which
will allow the political authorities to improve the interaction between the organisations
forming the respective regional innovation systems (universities, businesses and
knowledge centres).
1.7. Partnership information
Leader: University La Coruña Foundation (ES).
Partners: Gobierno de Cantabria (ES)
Asociación de Universidades Región Norte (PT)
Gobierno de Toscana (IT)
Poland region
Eslovenia region
Rumanía region
1.8. Project budget (in EUR)
2,7 M?
Section 2: Detailed Description of the Project
2.1. Rationale
2.1.1. Brief history of the project
The idea of launching the POLITEC project, as a capitalisation project within Interreg 4C, stems from the experience gained through the AVANTEC project, which was financed by Interreg 3B SUDOE and successfully completed in 2007. Amongst the results of AVANTEC, there was the application potential to the improvement of innovation policies in the interface sphere between universities, businesses and public administrations. This was not the main priority of AVANTEC, focused on providing services and creating companies, but it did include methodology which could be orientated in this other direction of support to innovation policies.
At the end of that project, both the participating partners and potential future partners expressed the desire to launch a new project, preferably with a political content, based on the methodology developed in AVANTEC. Once the content of the Interregional Cooperation Programme INTERREG 4C was made public along with its typology of projects related to capitalisation projects, it was a natural decision to present a new proposal that took advantage of the good practice developed in AVANTEC and was aimed at innovation policies. This is the origin of the POLITEC project, which is presented in this proposal.
As a fundamental keystone of the origin of the POLITEC project, it should be stressed that it was the public administrations themselves, consulted through the contact network of the Fundación Universidade da Coruña, the project leader, who voiced their interest in benefiting from the methodology developed in AVANTEC to adopt the good practice aimed at improving innovation policies in the sphere of relations between universities, businesses and the public administrations themselves.
2.1.2. Problem description/issues addressed
The problem tackled by the POLITEC project is essential in the structure of national and regional innovation systems. In fact, these systems were spoken about in the sense that they were made up of institutions that collectively promoted innovation. If there were no interconnection between institutions, one simply could not talk about systems.
However, it is easy to talk about the need for these connections, with the aim of providing innovation systems in their full sense, but it is not so easy to determine the state of these relations or to formulate policies to improve them. The relations are subtle. They are not seen directly, and they mostly lie in personal connections of the individuals that form part of these institutions.
On the other hand, there are a large number of innovation indicators. The “European
Innovation Scoreboard, 2006” contains the following innovation indicators for European countries plus the United States and Japan:
INPUT - Innovation drivers
? New S&E graduates per 1000 population aged 20-29
? Population with tertiary education per 100 population aged 25-64
? Broadband penetration rate (number of broadband lines per 100 population)
? Participation in life-long learning per 100 population aged 25-64
? Youth education attainment level (% of population aged 20-24 having
completed at least upper secondary education) INPUT - Knowledge creation
? Public R&D expenditures (% of GDP)
? Business R&D expenditures (% of GDP)
? Share of medium-high-tech and high-tech R&D (% of manufacturing R&D
expenditures)
? Share of enterprises receiving public funding for innovation INPUT - Innovation & entrepreneurship
? SMEs innovating in-house (% of SMEs)
? Innovative SMEs co-operating with others (% of SMEs)
? Innovation expenditures (% of turnover)
? Early-stage venture capital (% of GDP)
? ICT expenditures (% of GDP)
? SMEs using organisational innovation (% of SMEs) OUTPUT - Application
? Employment in high-tech services (% of total workforce)
? Exports of high technology products as a share of total exports
? Sales of new-to-market products (% of turnover)
? Sales of new-to-firm not new-to-market products (% of turnover)
? Employment in medium-high and high-tech manufacturing (% of total
workforce)
OUTPUT - Intellectual property
? New EPO patents per million population
? New USPTO patents per million population
? New Triad patents per million population
? New community trademarks per million population
? New community industrial designs per million population
Of this list of 25 indicators, only two refer to relational aspects, which are:
? Share of enterprises receiving public funding for innovation
? Innovative SMEs co-operating with others (% of SMEs)
The first indicator shows the relation between businesses and public administrations
through the financing that the latter contribute to the companies. The second refers to
cooperation between companies. Therefore, there is nothing about something as
essential as the relation between the institutions that generate new knowledge, i.e.
universities or research bodies and the companies as institutions that apply the new
knowledge to conceive new applications and develop new products or production
processes.
The intention of the POLITEC project is to rectify this shortcoming and provide an
original indicator system on relations between universities, businesses and public
administrations, obtained from the application of the methodology available from the
AVANTEC project and known as PATSI and POSTE, which will be described in
another section of this proposal.
This new indicator system aims to solve the problem of public administrations having to
formulate innovation policies in the sphere of the relations between institutions of the
innovation systems without having the data to orientate their decision.
This is the approach of the POLITEC project: to penetrate the terrain of the relations
produced in the innovation systems of the regions participating in the project and to
provide an indicator system to orientate the action plans of the public administrations in
the participating regions.
2.1.3. Objectives of the project
The strategic objective of the POLITEC project is to provide the public administrations
in the participating regions with a common working tool in the sphere of relations
between universities, businesses and public administrations, which allows an improved
sharing of the innovation policies in this field that is essential for the efficient
performance of the respective regional innovation systems.
The operational objectives of the project are as follows:
1. CURRENT POLICIES: to determine the current state of innovation policies on
the promotion of relations between universities, businesses and public
administrations in the participating regions.
2. TRANSFER OF GOOD PRACTICE: to transfer the PATSI and POSTE good
practice and methodology to the public administrations of the participating
regions through their use and control by the project partners.
3. INDICATOR SYSTEM: to build an indicator system in each participating
region on the relation between universities, businesses and public
administrations through the application of PATSI and POSTE methodology.
4. CONTACT ACTIONS: to create personal contacts on a regional and
interregional level between project partners, policy makers and key stakeholders
through seminars, conferences and other events.
5. DIFFUSION ACTIONS: to communicate actions taken and results achieved in
the project through diffusion initiatives such as Web page, press and radio.
6. NEW POLICIES: to draw up action plans in each participating region to provide
the appropriate authorities with practical suggestions for the orientation of new
innovation policies in the participating regions.
2.1.4. Expected outputs and results of the project
Tangible deliverables and visible results are considered expected outputs of the
POLITEC project. In contrast, the expected results refer to immediate, direct and
qualitative effects of the project. In the table below the expected outputs and results in
relation to the operational objectives of the project are set out.
OBJETIVES EXPECTED OUTPUT EXPECTED RESULT
Objective 1: ? 1 Report for each
Current policies participating region on
existing policies.
Objective 2: ? 1 transfer to each ? 2 people trained in PATSI Transfer of good participating region, via a methodology of each practice report, of the adapted participating region.
PATSI methodology. ? 2 people trained in POSTE
methodology of each ? 1 transfer to each
participating region, via a participating region.
report, of the adapted
POSTE methodology.
Objective 3: ? 1 PATSI survey in each ? 100 companies surveyed in Indicator system participating region. each participating region.
? 1 POSTE survey in each ? 50 research groups surveyed
participating region. in each participating region.
? 1 indicator system in each
participating region.
? 1 Report on indicator
system in each
participating region.
Objective 4: ? 2 contact actions on a ? 50 people contacted in actions Contact actions regional level in each on a regional level.
participating region. ? 100 people contacted in
? 2 contact actions on an actions on an interregional
interregional level. level. Objective 5: ? 1 project Web page.
Diffusion actions ? 2 press project references
for each participating
region.
? 2 radio project
presentations for each
participating region.
Objective 6: ? 1 action plan drawn up in ? 1 new innovation policy New policies each participating region suggested in each
and documented in the participating region.
corresponding report.
2.1.6. Approach and methodology
The methodology base of the POLITEC project comes from the PATSI and POSTE
methodology developed in the earlier AVANTEC project and is going to be transferred
as good practice to the competent authorities for innovation policies in the participating
regions.
In this section a brief reference will be made to the content of both methodologies.
PATSI methodology (Procedure of Advanced Technology Service Implementation),
successfully used in the earlier AVANTEC project, has been modified in the current
POLITEC project to adapt it to its specific objectives.
The actions to be carried out in PATSI have a starting point in the surveying of companies with the aim of determining their connection with universities and public administrations in the context of their performance as to innovation.
The survey will be undertaken through a personal interview with the appropriate person of the company holding the relevant information for the project’s aims. This person will
be identified by a previous telephone enquiry.
A visit sheet will be drawn up which includes basic information on the company and the contact person, together with their past performance in innovation and their future innovation prospects, and that must be completed by the interviewer.
The concept of innovation to be used is “innovation in the broadest sense”.
In the Oslo Manual of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 1(OECD), a company is considered to be innovative when it develops new or improved
products or services and manages to launch them onto the market or develops technologically new or improved processes in its goods production or service supply methods.
The procedure followed in PATSI consists in going back a step, not starting from the Oslo Manual, but broadening the concept of innovation in such a way that it is the businesspeople themselves who declare what is new or has been improved in their company in the last three years. There is no preset definition of the type of innovation or improvement, the decision as to what is new or improved is completely left to the businesspeople and, in addition, they are asked to specifically indicate the innovations or improvements that have taken place in their company in the last three years.
The idea of this procedure is to not only to take in all that is included in the Oslo Manual, but also that which is left out, in such a way that when one speaks of an innovative company, it will be one that has introduced innovations or improvements, and when one speaks of a non-innovative company, it will be one that has not introduced any innovations or improvements whatsoever.
The broader concept of innovation used in the interview covers everything that the businesspeople consider new or improved in their company in the last three years with an explicit description of the innovation or improvement.
The result of the PATSI methodology is the information on the innovation of the companies and their connection with universities and public administrations. This information allows a set of indicators to be created relevant to the drawing up of action plans in the POLITEC project.
POSTE (Procedure of Systematic Support to Technology Entrepreneurs) methodology also adapts to the needs of the POLITEC project. In relation to PATSI, which was a type of methodology that dealt with the technological demand of companies, POSTE methodology refers to the technological offer of universities and research groups. If the
1 OECD, 1996. Proposed Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Technological Innovation Data.
Oslo Manual. Paris. Second Edition.
concept of innovation in the broadest sense was the key to PATSI, POSTE deals with
creative, technological initiatives.
Creative Technological Initiative (CTI) refers to the first development to a useable state
of a technological opportunity as the exploitation of a possibility which occurs in the
field of science and technology to conceive new or improved products (goods and
services) or processes.
? It speaks of “initiative” because a first development must exist. It is not
something that is driven by another that has already been done, but by
something occurring firsthand, from real initiative.
? It is “technological” because it refers to products and processes. The important
aspect is that it is placed in the interface between knowledge and the market. It
has to pass from mere knowledge of the fundamentals of a subject to a state that
can be shown to be useful from a functional point of view.
? And, of course, it must be “creative”. It is not enough to find something that is
done here for the first time but has already been done somewhere else.
Something must be found that is new or better in the absolute sense.
The search for CTI takes place in universities and research bodies. The POLITEC
project partners determine which are the particular institutional search fields for CTI,
which depends on their experience and previously established contacts.
A particular line in the search for CTI lies in the researchers in research groups who
carry out new knowledge creation tasks in the most diverse areas of science and
technology. These groups tend to be fully identified, and the question is to determine
whether they contain CTI. There could also be other possibilities in the search for CTI,
which is left to the consideration of the POLITEC partners.
Obtaining the information is achieved through a personal interview with the head of the
research group. There is an interview sheet that can be followed to contact these agents
with the aim of obtaining information on CTI.
The questionnaire represents a job procedure based on technology offer and allows the
gathering of information on performance in research with possibilities of reaching the
market. Therefore, it deals with information sensitive for establishing relations with
businesses and public administrations.
The data obtained through the survey carried out according to POSTE lead to the
construction of offer indicators. Together with the previous demand indicators deriving
from PATSI it is possible to construct an indicator system on the interface between
institutions of the regional innovation systems.
This indicator system is the key to orientating the drawing up of action plans in
innovation policy, as put forward in the POLITEC project.
2.1.7. Components of the project
The sequence of actions to be carried out in the project is set out in the following chart.
The project components are designated C1 to C6 and are directly related to the 6 project
objectives. The duration of the project is marked in months from 1 (initial month) to 24
(final month).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
x x x C1
x x x C2
x x x x x x C3
x x x x x x C4
x x x x x x x x x x x x C5
x x x C6
Each project component content is detailed below:
Component 1: Identification of current policies
Component 2: Transfer of good practice based on PATSI and POSTE
Component 3: Construction of the indicator system
Component 4: Carrying out of contact actions
Component 5: Carrying out of diffusion actions
Component 6: Drawing up of action plans for new innovation policies
……………………………TO BE DEVELOPED
2.1.8. Durability of the project results
The durability of the project is based on the contacts of the participating partners with the public authorities responsible for the relations between universities, businesses and public administrations.
The links between the partners and the regional authorities are as
follows: …………………………………………………TO BE DEVELOPED
2.2. Policy context
2.2.1. Contribution to the programme’s objectives and to the Lisbon and Gothenburg
agendas
2.2.2????????????????????????
2.2.3. Consistency of the project with EU horizontal policies
2.3. Management and coordination