Co-opting expertise to fine-tune a winning strategy

Silesia and Lower Austria are outstanding examples of the benefits of collaboration. These two IRE regions have established a systematic exchange of information to shape and implement a range of projects to boost innovation in their area and to derive new methodologies, tools and knowledge. Both regions agree that collaboration with other innovating areas has been vitally important in the process — not only in learning what works, but also what doesn’t.

The Polish region of Silesia carried out a Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) project between 2001 and 2004, which has set in place an innovation policy to improve competitiveness and produce high-quality products for international trade by 2013. The main driving spirit of the strategy was the desire to stimulate collaborative partnerships, using the IRE Network as a platform. Modelling its activities on experience from trailblazing regions across the EU, the region aimed to achieve its goals by promoting both diversity and cooperation at the same time, and identifying and promoting new tools to support innovation development.

Among the tangible benefits so far are increased cooperation between the R&D sector and companies, new entrepreneurship promotion schemes and many new initiatives including a regional centre for innovation and technology transfer, the Silesia business angels network, the network of growth of ICT innovation in SMEs and Inwestor, a loan fund development agency. Dedicated coordination and management units were established to ensure efficient and coherent implementation of the regional innovation strategy.

Learning from other experts

Luk Palmen of the Upper Silesia Agency for Enterprises Restructuring says that Silesia has learned many lessons about shaping innovation activities through interaction and cooperation with experts from fellow IRE regions. This opportunity to collaborate, he explains, fuelled a process of “learning from the good experiences and also from the mistakes other regions had made. The experts we consulted shared not only their theories, but also the ‘problems in the kitchen’. They were active during workshops, supported us in e-mail exchanges and were involved in preparing practical guidelines. Out of this support came new projects, such as our setting up of a seed capital fund and the establishment of business services centres at universities.”

Bringing key actors together

Help has also been at hand from the IRE Secretariat, which provided good practice examples from IRE regions, for example on cluster innovation systems and entrepreneurship promotion in schools. Luk Palmen says, “The IRE Secretariat has been very helpful in the past few years. For instance, the management unit of the regional innovation system regularly organised thematic workshops to bring together key actors to initiate new innovation support measures in our region. Thanks to the Secretariat we received information about good practices in Europe and about experts whom we then invited to our workshops. Our role in the IRE working group on clusters allowed us to correlate our experiences with those of others who had carried out similar projects.” The network development in Silesia is one example. This project has established three cooperation networks for medical equipment, tourism and railway transport which have helped to open channels of communication and created a much more positive view of collaboration in the region.   

Systematic strategies in Lower Austria

The Lower Austria region has developed an innovation strategy through a RIS project, which ran between 1997 and 1999. The Ministry of Economic Affairs, Tourism and Technology implemented the strategy and has kept up the momentum with a programme of continuous improvement over the past 10 years. RISNO, as the region’s RIS is known, is structured into five key areas: innovation, technology, cooperation, internationalisation and mobilisation of business start-ups. The region is an active member of the IRE network, involved in a wide range of IRE projects carefully chosen to advance innovation in its particular areas of interest. Experience gained through this collaboration as well as through the region’s own projects is systematically analysed and used to shape subsequent activities. 

One productive partnership that grew out of the RIS was that of Lower Austria and Vienna. Vienna is the country’s traditional centre of culture and education, while Lower Austria, although having a high standard of living, urgently needed more research, technology and development facilities. Both regions have intensified collaboration with the development of the RIS and in 2002 won the EU PAXIS Award of Excellence as one of 22 European regions which have developed an outstanding track record in supporting the creation and growth of innovative start-ups.

But Lower Austria is very careful never to rest on its laurels. Monitoring and detailed follow-up are key components of the region’s approach, safeguarding the relevance of its innovation strategy and measuring the effects of the actions underpinning it. A comprehensive method for the monitoring and evaluation of regional innovation funding schemes was developed under the transnational Partners Ensuring Progress scheme, which ran from 1999 to 2001. A subsequent project, Strengthening the Regional Innovation Profile (STRINNOP), which ran from 2001-2003, then followed on from this by looking at how the regional innovation profile could be compared between several regions in order to learn from each other’s strengths and good practice. Two further transregional projects, IMPACTSCAN and ARISE, were subsequently implemented based on the findings of STRINNOP to assess the impact regional innovation policy and define approaches to interregional benchmarking based on measurable indicators.   

A holistic perspective

After a few years of implementing these projects, the focus widened to embrace a “holistic” regional innovation system. Hans-Christian Jäger, a consultant engineer who has been contributing to Lower Austria’s regional innovations strategies since 1997, says, “By holistic we mean that the success of any innovation is dependent upon a complete system of interactions between the innovator and those individuals and organisations that facilitate the innovation process from the idea stage to R&D and commercialisation. All involved partners have to have a common understanding of the mechanisms of their actions to be able to foster the economic success of the regional firms and thus to increase the quantity and quality of work in their region.”

The experience gained as a result of this process feeds back into the network. The Lower Austria region is a member of an IRE working group specifically focusing on regional innovation systems, and had previously contributed to a working group devoted to innovative clusters. The working groups have been a successful tool for learning from other countries. Irma Priedl, Area Manager for Innovation and Technology at the Regional Government of Lower Austria, says, “Platforms such as the IRE working groups have allowed us an exchange of opinions and helped us apply various tools with respect to innovation policy which are then used as input for further improvements.”

Collaboration with other regions through IRE projects and working groups has also helped Lower Austria make huge strides in increasing the innovation culture in the region. It is a powerful driver of the structured process of continuous improvement of the innovation system with a strong focus on the competitiveness of regional firms. Irma Priedl says, “We have gained new and confirmed existing insights through collaboration with other regions, such as the need for testing through pilot actions and the importance of understanding a region’s strengths and weaknesses.”

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