Governance and systemic instruments in innovation policies IRE Conference Impact Assessment for bett

1
Governance and systemic instruments in
innovationpoliciesIRE ConferenceImpact
Assessment for better governance of regional
innovation policiesProf. Lena TsipouriCenter
of Financial StudiesNational and Kapodistrian
University of Athens
2
Outline

• Some thoughts on governance in general
• Innovation governance features and caveats
• Innovation governance rigidities and trends
• Innovation governance techniques and sensitivity
• Conclusions the real challenge is creating
  institutions

3
Some thoughts on governance in general

• The debate on European governance,
• launched by the Commission
• in its White Paper of July 2001,
• concerns all the
• rules, procedures and practices
• affecting how powers are exercised
• within the European Union

4
Some thoughts on governance in general (cont.)

• Governance is an abstract concept dealing with
  principles, modes and ways of organisation
• Governance and policy are affiliated
• Governance becomes increasingly important as
  systemic complexity increases and central
  structures or hierarchical governments become
  unable to deal alone with this complexity.

5
Some thoughts on governance in general (cont.)

• The following principles emerge as relevant
• A policy should have a vision, which must be long
  term and flexible.
• A good policy must be integrated (multi-level and
  multi-sectoral).
• Efficiency also requires transparency,
  stakeholder involvement and accountability.

6
Some thoughts on governance in general (cont.)

• Good governance has to be designed in a way that
  takes into account the most appropriate level of
  policy intervention, be it international,
  national, multilateral, regional or sub-regional.

7
Some thoughts on governance in general (cont.)
variety

• The degree of regional autonomy varies
  considerably from one Member State to another
• the political authority, the legal system and
  evolving administrative acts
• the financial capabilities, given by the share of
  the budget that is managed by the territorial
  authorities, compared to the national budget
• the administrative capabilities, which are
  determined by the available skills and the
  accumulated experience of territorial autonomy.
• Good governance is system/region specific

8
Innovation governance features and caveats

• Because of the encompassing nature of innovation
  there are many organisations involved in policy
  design (ministries), implementation (ministries
  and agencies) and monitoring/evaluation
  (auditors, developmental responsibilities).
• Because of the serendipity and uncertainty of
  the innovation process it is almost impossible to
  clearly attribute success and failure to specific
  actors/policies

9
Innovation governance features and caveats
(cont.)

• Because of the relevance of interaction for
  innovation the proximity dimension may play a
  crucial role
• Because of the relevance of scale of exploitation
  the global dimension may play a crucial role as
  well
• Because of the international competitive
  pressures flexibility and adaptation are crucial

10
Innovation governance features and caveats
(cont.)

• This means that good innovation governance
  requires
• Coordination (at various levels)
• Flexibility
• Speed
• Means
• Specific tools

11
Innovation governance basic models in the
regions

• A broader number of actors with strong
  inter-organisation co-ordination throughout the
  policy cycle.
• Strong co-ordination based on hierarchical
  relations
• Fragmented systems with more actors following
  individual agendas

12
Innovation governance rigidities and trends

• Evolution requires adaptation but there is a
  trade-off between new design and learning
  (frequency and time horizon of changes)
• The rhetoric of innovation governance is not
  necessarily reflected in actual steps of
  implementation
• There is not one optimal structure of
  coordination or best mix of tools
• There is more and more knowledge on appropriate
  tools but the difficulties lie in the
  implementation of their combination

13
Innovation governance rigidities and trends
(cont.)

• Leadership recognition of the need for strategic
  thinking but reluctance to leave it to others
• Stakeholder involvement an obligation or a
  right?
• Strategic approach how often should/could
  strategies be changed/adapted?
• Benchmarking fashion or learning tool?

14
Innovation governance techniques and sensitivity

• Stakeholder involvement
• Strategy and leadership
• Monitoring and evaluation
• Benchmarking

15
Two models

• MONIT (OECD) The policy cycle
• agenda setting and prioritisation
• implementation
• evaluation and learning.
• PRO INNO a practical approach
• The EIS indicators
• Policy appraisal (TC)

16
Strategic approach policy has to be
evidence-based, long-term and flexible

• Openness of the process of designing innovation
  policy (measures)
• Quality of inputs to policy making (application
  of evidence based techniques, use of evaluation
  results)
• Regularity and transparency of policy monitoring
  and review processes
• The impact on innovation of developments and
  regulations in other policy fields is appraised

17
Stakeholder involvement

• Do policy makers want stakeholders involved?
• Is consultation mandatory or non-binding?
• What is the influence of the consultation timing
  (trade off between inclusiveness and effective
  and rapid decision making)
• Is stakeholder involvement formal or
  substantiall?
• Do stakeholders themselves want to be involved
  in the sense of being asked or are they willing
  to invest the resources to be informed and able
  to present evidence-based cases?
• How inclusive are consultations (business,
  labour, research organisations, civil society??)

18
The promotion of evaluation

• The evaluation culture in innovation policy is
  usually based in a broader evaluation culture in
  a country
• Policy needs to decide How much evaluation.
• There is a strong divergence between rhetoric and
  application of evaluation.

19
Benchmarking

• A fashion quantitative benchmarking exercises
  to assess comparative innovation performance
  (scoreboards, etc.)
• A more cumbersome and ambiguous exercise
  qualitative benchmarking
• Innovation benchmarking may be an autonomous
  activity or part of industrial/competitiveness
  benchmarking,
• Benchmarking can be the initiative of the public
  authorities or NGOs

20
Benchmarking

• A set of agreed indicators (e.g. EIS)
• The involvement of senior policy makers
  /executives in trans-national networks
• Formal mechanisms for policy learning (studies,
  innovation observatories, study visits, joint
  events with other countries, etc.),
• Using foreign expertise
• Compare policy evolution
• Interregional programmes on innovation

21
Invest resources to learn from whom?

• An almost natural choice, is learning from
  neighbours. Neighbourhood can be geographical or
  cultural language, institutional evolution and
  common history appear to play a common role.
• Learn from the model regions or from their direct
  competitors.
• Learn from regions with similar characteristics
  who progress rapidly

22

• In certain cases there is
• a need for inventive thinking
• for indicator creation or substitution of
  organisations that lack the experience and means
  to proceed systematically.

23
Conclusions the real challenge is creating
institutions

• Put the right organisations in place
• But more important than the right organisation
  is full and effective coordination
• Put the right indicators and tools in place
• But more important than right is appropriate
• Get the necessary means
• But more important than necessary is their
  effective utilisation