Transregional Cooperation in

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• Trans-regional Co-operation in
• Strengthening the Strategic Dimension
• - and thus the Success -
• of Regional RTDI Strategies
• Dr. Günter Clar
• Dublin, 19 April, 2007
• clar_at_steinbeis-europa.de

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European Challenges

• GDP per capita
• Input/output relation, efficiency
• Competitiveness and Quality of Life in the EU
  (discrepancies!)
• Innovativeness in EU
• Investment in Research, Technology Development
  and Innovation (RTDI) - human and financial
  resources
• Mobility adaptability, co-operation
  structured communication
• Transition to knowledge-based society (beyond
  RTDI fields)

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3 Strands of EU Policy Development

• Formally, RTDI has become a key issue
• in EU policy in general
• In EU 2007-2013 budget in general (far beyond the
  RTDI Framework programmes)
• Importance of Strategic Policy Intelligence (SPI)
  for administration, for enterprises, for NGOs
• a better decision base to improve quality of
  policy design, the credibility of the process,
  and the implementation,
• far reaching impacts on economic and business
  intelligence
• Need for better policy integration and impact
  importance of regional actors

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Regions Strengthening EU Strategies

• Regional RTDI governance in EU context -
  vertical effect, interaction with other
  governance levels
• adapting EU and national RTDI policy approach to
  specific territorial conditions, and
• communicating / feeding in needs of the regions
  to national and EU level
• Regional RTDI governance vis-à-vis national and
  EU level horizontal, trans-regional effect
  self organising capacity potentially higher
  implementation impact and efficiency
• can react more rapidly
• can proactively bring all relevant stakeholders
  together
• can tailor (macro) measures better to regional /
  institutional needs (smart local intermediaries,
  knowledge-brokers)

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Measures for Staying Competitive

• Supporting changes in Innovation Systems (IS)
• Stimulate knowledge generation, diffusion,
  absorption
• Develop new understanding of IS (actors,
  outreach, )
• More multifaceted innovation policy
  (trans-policy-fields, -sectoral, -governance
  levels, -national, )
• Adapting Framework Conditions (soft and hard)
• Competencies and values, entrepreneurship
  culture, technical standards, legal and work
  regulations, institutional social capital, .
• Using more Strategic Policy Intelligence (SPI)
  more intelligently
• Strategic analyses of (trans-)national / regional
  / sectoral innovation systems and processes
• Benchmarking, policy monitoring evaluation
• Technology Foresight Assessment, inclusive
  policy design

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Strategic Policy Intelligence (SPI)

• The set of activities to search, process, diffuse
  protect information in order to make it
  available to the right persons at the right
  time,so that they can take the right decisions.
• Related to Research Innovation (RTDI) policies
  this includes such policy support instruments as
  foresight technology assessment, monitoring,
  benchmarking, regional innovation auditing,
  strategic evaluation, .

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Why SPI?

• Basis for better decisions and investments(better
  informed, more clearly based, more broadly based
  and consensual, more likely on average to be
  optimum and lower risk)
• early recognition of economic and social
  opportunities
• early warning against negative impacts
• procedures for mitigating conflicting situations
• reducing costly errors or costly missed
  opportunities

• background knowledge for planners designers,
  decision aid for technology developers, users,
  regulators
• contributions to resilient system (improved
  functionality, consensual co-ordination, policy
  coherence), socially and environmentally
  compatible design
• attracting more investments also from other
  sources, incl. FDI

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RTDI, SPI, Regional Decision Makers

• Tight budgets, pressure to support obvious and
  short-term demands
• Taking informed RTDI related decisions needs
  comprehensive knowledge base and structured
  stakeholder input
• In general, long-term and macro strategies are
  difficult to translate into day-to-day decision
  making procedures
• Various regions and smaller countries have
  addressed these issues effectively and used SPI
  based approaches successfully.
• Why not the others?
• Is the use of SPI tools too expensive, too
  complicated, too academic, too different from
  established proven procedures?
• Are there no understandable adaptable models
  and guidelines?

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RegStrat - A European Consortium
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• Contributing to Policy Fields of High EU
  Relevance
• Regional actors contribution to Lisbon and
  Barcelona Goals
• Regional dimension of FP7
• Strategic dimension of CIP
• Strategic dimension and RTDI investments of
  Structural Funds

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RegStrat Objectives

• The RegStrat Project aims to improve (regional)
  policy design and implementation by supporting
  regional decision-makers and facilitating the
  application of Strategic Policy Intelligence
• Foster understanding of SPI Tools
• Supply appropriately processed information
• Design pilot applications to test usability of
  tools
• Ongoing policy learning in practice
• Building both on EU and regional knowledge-base
• Integrating use of regional, national, EU (ERDF,
  ESG, FP7, CIP), and FDI support
• Contributing to policy fields of high EU and
  regional relevance

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Regional RTDI Investment Strategies

• RegStrat focuses on the intersection of policy
  research, SPI application and regional
  development
• Bringing together regional stakeholder networks,
  SPI practitioners, policy researchers
• Rationale with improved decision base, and more
  innovative less risky choices, regional actors
  more confident RTDI-related in investment
  decisions. More likely to
• allocate own public funds for RTDI-related or
  relevant activities (ST, HE, other policy
  fields)
• leverage such investments from in private
  sector
• attract resources from national and EU
  (Cohesion, Agriculture, Infrastructure etc), AND
  from foreign direct investment budgets.

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RegStrat pilots SPI tailored to regional
situation