RIS/RITTS newsletter launched to promote innovation in the regions
Increasing interaction and cooperation between regions which want to develop their innovative capacity is the aim of a newly launched newsletter. "The Innovative Regions Newsletter" presents ideas and experiences from individual regions in Europe and the latest news and initiatives from the European Commission in the field. There are now more than 100 regions in the European Union which have implemented or are currently implementing either a Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) or a Regional Innovation and Technology Transfer Strategy (RITTS) project. Respectively falling within the European Regional Development Fund and the INNOVATION programme, RIS and RITTS both provide regions with EU funding to analyse their region, and then develop and implement a strategy to optimise innovation policies and infrastructures. Whilst initially, RIS and RITTS projects focused on the regions internally, now that there is a critical mass of schemes across Europe, much more attention is being paid to interregional activities. The newsletter is just one initiative from the network of RIS/RITTS regions. Published monthly by the secretariat of the network, it aims to highlight the successes of RIS/RITTS projects in regions across Europe. In this way, any region may benefit from the ideas and experiences of similar regions across Europe. Even regions which are not in receipt of EU funding are encouraged to use the experiences of other regions in setting up their own innovation strategies. The next stage in the EU's RIS/RITTS schemes will see 30 new regional projects launched in the next few months. In addition, for the first time, around 12 cooperation projects involving regions which have already implemented RIS/RITTS projects are also to be funded, adding a new interregional dimension to the two schemes.