Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol2-1 > PRO INNO Europe Innovation policy

An initiative of the Directorate General Enterprise and Industry, PRO INNO Europe® aims to become the focal point for innovation policy in Europe and policy co-operation.

The aim of the initiative is to help European enterprises innovate better and faster, as well as optimise and leverage complementarities between the various innovation support measures that exist throughout Europe, at regional, national and community level.

It gives a prominent role to national and regional innovation policy in Europe and innovation support actors.

PRO INNO Europe® is composed of five building blocks that provide an integrated policy approach to develop new and better innovation policy in Europe. Together, they provide analysis, benchmarking and development tools and activities to enhance the performance of innovation policy in Europe and support measures and to further co-operation between innovation policy makers across Europe.

Each building block forms part of either the policy analysis or the policy co-operation pillars of the PRO INNO Europe® initiative:

Innovation policy in Europe analysis

• Benchmarking of innovation performance (INNO-Metrics)
• Analysing of major innovation trends (INNO-Policy Trendchart)
• Pooling of world-wide knowledge and contacts with regard to innovation policy in Europe and business innovation and facilitating a dialogue between public authorities, industry and academia on innovation policy (INNO-GRIPS)

Policy co-operation

• Stimulating of transnational innovation policy co-operation (INNO-Nets)
• Providing incentives for joint innovation actions (INNO-Actions)
• Taken all together, PRO INNO Europe® provides a platform for the exchange of information, views, mutual learning and practical co-operation between innovation policy and innovation support.

Policy analysis

Inno-Metrics

Innovation is a key factor to determine productivity growth. INNO-Metrics aims to understand the sources and patterns of innovative activity in the economy, which is fundamental to developing better policies.

INNO-Metrics is currently composed of two instruments, the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) and the Innobarometer. The EIS attempts to benchmark, on a yearly basis, the innovation performance of member states, drawing on statistics from a variety of sources, primarily the Community Innovation Survey. The Innobarometer complements the results of the EIS by analysing specific aspects of innovation through a survey of 3,500 randomly selected companies throughout the EU.

INNO-Policy Trend Chart

The INNO-Policy TrendChart independently describes and analyses major innovation policy in Europe trends at national and regional levels across Europe. It aims to contribute to policy assessment and to identify examples of good practice, thus improving the basis for decision-making in innovation policy in Europe.

A policy monitoring network tracks developments in innovation policy measures in 39 countries. The information collected by this network is used to run and maintain an inventory of innovation policy information and policy measures, and also feeds into annual country reports and an annual European Innovation Progress Report.

INNO-Appraisal

The INNO-Appraisal project was finalised in February this year. The aim of the project was to contribute to a better understanding of how evaluation is currently used in innovation policy in Europe, and how evaluation contributes to policy making. INNO-Appraisal was the first systematic attempt to provide an overview of evaluation practice in Europe. By doing so, it sought to achieve a second, equally important aim: to render evaluation practice accessible to the policy and evaluation community. A third aim was to contribute to a better-informed evaluation discourse across a better-networked evaluation community in Europe.

This study has, for the first time, provided the innovation policy in Europe community and the evaluation community in Europe with a statistical account and analysis of evaluation practice in Europe.

To view the study, visit: www.proinno-europe.eu/appraisal

Inno-Grips

INNO-Grips supports policy makers in adopting appropriate policy responses to emerging innovation needs, trends and phenomena. It analyses framework conditions, barriers and drivers to innovation and innovation policy in Europe, and offers intelligence on international developments in these fields.

Offering a platform for experts to exchange views, ideas and best practices with a view to optimise innovation policy in Europe, INNO-Grips provides an accessible pool of knowledge on worldwide existing studies and information on innovation policy-making, business innovation and academic discussions.

Inno-Views

The INNO-VIEWS project explores new or better innovation policy instruments by establishing a dialogue between public authorities, analysts, industry and academia on innovation policy matters.

Policy co-operation

Inno-Nets

The first generation of INNO-Nets focused on cluster policy co-operation, support to knowledge-based SMEs and start-ups, adding value to transnational knowledge, and the links between industry and research, as well as innovation in services. The aim was to stimulate transnational co-operation among different national or sub-national innovation programmes.

The four INNO-Nets focusing on cluster policy co-operation formed the European Cluster Alliance, bringing together 88 cluster regions. The Alliance is an open platform that maintains a permanent innovation policy in Europe dialogue among national and regional public authorities responsible for developing cluster policies and managing cluster programmes in their countries.

The European Cluster Alliance aims to become the single place at EU level for elaborating new ideas and practical tools for improving cluster innovation policy in Europe, and for fostering European co-operation at policy level that will facilitate the further development of the more competitive world-class clusters in Europe.

Inno-Actions

The second generation of INNO-Actions aims to bring together public innovators with a view to fostering transnational co-operation on support for innovation through different instruments.

The main outcomes will be to set up an approach for quality labelling of cluster management, and to develop training materials to help cluster organisations achieve high levels of excellence in their work, to help to raise the international profile of a city or region, thereby contributing to building a stronger regional innovation identity.

Inno-Learning Platform

The INNO-Learning Platform intends to promote trans-national innovation policy co-operation across Europe. There is a huge diversity of policy measures that support innovation in Europe, which reflect the diversity of framework conditions, cultural differences and political priorities of the member states.

The initiative consists of the Learning Platform Consortium, the INNO-Learning Steering Group and a set of exploratory teams and thematic task forces carrying out the analytical works.

For more information, visit:
www.proinno-europe.eu