Towards Sustainable Innovation
ike ripples in a pond, the effects of the new generation of Innovation projects will persist and spread long after the funded projects themselves have ended.
Most of these projects will involve practical, hands-on transfers of technology, knowledge or know-how - from universities to industry, between sectors, and between countries. But at the same time they will, quite explicitly, address the process of innovation itself. The partners will be encouraged and assisted to identify the non-technical sources of technology transfer 'friction' - the cultural, institutional, organisational and regulatory barriers which prevent or slow the spread and adoption of new technologies, especially by small and medium-sized enterprises.
Projects which face shared problems are likely to be clustered, and will be helped to develop common solutions by intermediary experts with extensive cross-sectoral experience, such as science parks, business schools and chambers of commerce. The aim is to develop procedures, tools and linkages which the companies involved can apply repeatedly, after the project is over - in other words, to strengthen their innovative capacity.
Further, these solutions will, by their very nature, be sufficiently generic to be of use to other SMEs. Through the intermediary partners, as well as through newly established European platforms, they will rapidly become available to wider networks of companies, strengthening the innovative capacity of Europe as a whole.
March 2000
