In the process of globalisation regional innovation
benchmarking and entrepreneurial management is getting more and more
important. The Thematic Network STRINNOP has proved itself as a platform
for the international exchange of regional innovation benchmarking
activities and for successful entrepreneurial concepts to foster innovative
activities in SME and in the region.
Main concern of the final conference in Bremen (Germany) which was
organized in collaboration with the Transatlantic Business School
Alliance was to share hot topics and discuss project findings. Key
topics were:
- regional benchmarking and company benchmarking state
of art
- business incubation and technology centres, including
how to attract young firms, and
- entrepreneurship building at universities and within
companies.
In addition to the conference study visits at the Technology
Park Bremen and at the cluster "mobile solutions were organised,
the second in collaboration with the ERIK-thematic working group "Clusters".
Here future trends and challenges in the rapidly evolving world of
mobile communications were discussed.
Topics in this context were:
- BITZ. Bremer Innovations- und Technologiezentrum
- Pre-Seed-Program for Academic Start-Ups
- t.i.m.e. programme (www.bremen-in-time.de)
- cluster "mobile solution group" (www.mobile-solution-group.de)
- Mobile Solution Center
- Project Center for e/m-business.
Invited experts from all over Europe met in Bremen and
formed a top-class conference programme (see agenda, presentations
and participation list at the project website: www.strinnop.net).
Speakers from politics, academia, R&D organisations, regional
development agencies and ministries offered an insight into current
regional strategies, implementation activities and future trends.
About 140 registered participants from 33 European countries as well
as from U.S.A. and Mexico enjoyed the presentations and different
perspectives given on services to innovative SME, activities to perform
regional innovation benchmarking (see STRINNOP Guidebook www.strinnop.net)
and business oriented topics.
The discussion during the conference underlined that
regional economical development needs innovation and its implementation
in the market. Regarding the educational support the presentations
showed that especially those curricula offer a fruitful framework
for innovative ideas which are highly practice-oriented and include
an intercultural approach at an early stage. Looking at the good practice
show cases (see library of good practice cases of the STRINNOP partners
in the web www.strinnop.net) the well directed public money in specific
strategic measures in a region show correlative economic growth such
as in the case of VIB Biotech Valley in Gent (F), Microtechnologies
in Itzehoe (D) or Mobile Solutions in Bremen (D). The conference offered
not only information on hot topics but first of all gave the opportunity
to exchanging new approaches and ideas with other regions working
in the field of innovation support activities.
Next to learning from good practice experiences the
newly developed STRINNOP Facilitator was of high interest to the conference
participants. The Tool supports the self assessment of the Regional
Innovation Profile by providing a set of indicators. The user fills
in his ratings and gets an immediate visual feedback of his assessment
in form of a "spider diagram" with axes according the STRINNOP
step-by-step approach.
Figure 1: STRINNOP Facilitator.
A step-wise comparison of an individual
Regional Innovation Profile to the whole STRINNOP sample.
Single indicators are merged by the STRINNOP
Facilitator to the rating of single steps in a comfortable way not
requiring a score for every indicator. The individual assessment
can be benchmarked to the ratings to (min-mean-max) of the whole
STRINNOP sample.
The “STRINNOP Facilitator”
indicates the user the strengths and weaknesses of his/her region
in a visual way. If the facilitator discloses some regional weaknesses
the user can directly switch to the STRINNOP website in order to
find out which good practice tools the STRINNOP members offer to
overcome the identified weaknesses. All STRINNOP members are willing
to assist other regions in transferring their published STRINNOP
good practice tools to other regions and adapting them according
to the specific regional framework and regulations.
The regional self-assessments by the
STRINNOP regions were performed by single partner institutions,
by a group of actors of the regional innovation support or by members
of the regional steering committee. Therefore the gathered experiences
cover a broad scope. The increased awareness of the involved persons
for the regional SWOT (strengths – weaknesses – opportunities
– threats) is often mentioned as one major benefit of this
self-assessment experiment. The debate on single indicators within
the single regions and within the STRINNOP network has strengthen
the awareness of most of the regions for developing clearer targets
for the regional innovation supporting infrastructure as they have
so far.
The “STRINNOP Facilitator” is available under "www.STRINNOP.net
à results" and enables a region to assess itself and
to compare the results to the STRINNOP sample in a convenient and
pragmatic way.
In conclusion the discussions of the
conference showed that there is high interest to collaborate in
developing a methodology for regional innovation benchmarking and
profiling. STRINNOP partners plan to develop the methodology further
in the context of a planned call for proposals by DG Enterprise
in spring 2004.
