Commencing in 2006, the 27-months project adopts an ambitious cross-cutting and integrating approach to harness synergies from past and present developments, and knowledge stocks regarding Strategic Policy Intelligence (SPI) tools. As Strategic Policy Intelligence Tools, we consider the set of activities to search, process, diffuse and protect information in order to make it available to the right persons at the right time in order to take the right decisions – including such policy instruments as evaluation, foresight, technology assessment and roadmapping, benchmarking, etc. The project approach takes account of the different governance levels, different policy and policy research fields, and the different actor communities of Europe's (trans-) regional, national and sectoral innovation systems.
In spite of an increasing policy focus on innovation, Europe has a competitiveness problem vis-à-vis its main competitors and with, in some aspects, weak innovation efforts and successes. Given the number of public and private actors in innovation-related policy domains and thus the increasing complexity of the innovation process itself, policy actions and relevant actors should be interrelated. Innovation policy needs to become a systemic, cross-cutting activity. At the same time, to ensure more effectiveness, efficiency and, ultimately, more success, priority-setting and decision-taking in the policy making process should be organised in a more non-centralised way.
In this context, regional actors can make a significant contribution to supporting innovation and, with regard to the "Lisbon competitiveness goals" and the "Barcelona 3% benchmark”, to increasing RTDI investments in Europe’s territories. Regional actors, however, often lack a comprehensive knowledge base and the structured stakeholder input needed to take informed RTDI related decisions. They also face particular challenges when prioritizing parts of their budgets to design and support regional S&T investment decisions.
What has been shown, e.g. through EU- or self-supported regional initiatives or the Irish experience, is that some territories in Europe and also in other continents made considerable progress through the application of appropriately conceived SPI tools. As regional progress in this respect is also convincing to policy makers and program managers at other governance levels, these territories tend to attract additional resources from national, EU (Regional Development, Agriculture, Infrastructure etc.) and foreign direct investment budgets more successfully.
RegStrat aims, therefore, at supporting regional actors in the acquisition of such expertise. As strategic knowledge is both expensive to generate and difficult to translate into day-to-day decision-making, it is also important to facilitate networking and knowledge-exchange between regions and with EU level organizations, taking advantage of the different regional structures, preconditions and processes. Exchanging strategic knowledge across a broader range of policy fields, policy actors and governance levels also meets the growing demand for greater transparency and participation in public decisions.
Given the current political agenda in the EU, where the planning for the implementation of the post-2006 Structural Funds is in a decisive phase, a better and more systematic use of SPI in Europe’s territories is considered an important factor. The Structural Funds, as a key policy instrument of the EU, are directed at the convergence of Europe’s regions, at strengthening regional competitiveness and employment, and at enhancing co-operation of Europe’s territories. The implementation of Structural Funds projects is a complex process involving EU, national and regional bodies, and one of the tools to start and guide the process are the Community Strategic Guidelines adopted by the EU Commission in July 2005 (COM (2005) 0299). These Guidelines specifically mention SPI tools to strengthen the strategic dimension of policies, to ensure a better integration of community priorities in national and regional development programs, and to secure a more decentralised sharing of responsibilities. The overall aim is to improve knowledge and innovation for growth, and also to increase and improve RTDI investments by the regional actors in both, the public and the private sector. Obviously, there is a great need for support to strategic knowledge generation and capacity building in this respect. Therefore, this will be an important focus of the RegStrat project.
The RegStrat project will also highlight how the growing demand for greater transparency and participation in public RTDI decisions can be met through the systematic and structured use of strategic policy intelligence tools, and thus foster the emergence of new patterns of decision-making. SPI tools and methodologies can provide independence, flexibility and a ‘variable geometry’ of stakeholders thus avoiding the potential ‘lock-in’ of existing structures and decision patterns. It will focus on optimising synergies with other policy fields, other regions, and other governance-levels, and will continuously maintain an ‘end-user’ perspective.
RegStrat seeks to generate positive impacts on regional RTDI investments both:
For further information, please contact:
Dr. Guenter Clar, Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, Stuttgart (clar@steinbeis-europa.de, +49-711-123-4017)
Sabine Hafner-Zimmermann (hafner@steinbeis-europa.de, tel. +49-711-123-4025)