The Peer Review workshop for the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol was held on the 20th of June 2017 during the 5th Interregional Learning Workshop in Györ (Hungary).
It dealt with the “Operational Programme Investment in Growth and Jobs, ERDF 2014-2020, Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South-Tyrol, Investment Priority 1 b), and specifically with two measures: “Support to the cooperation activities of R&D to the development of new sustainable technologies, new products and services” and “Interventions to the support of the qualification of the offer of knowledge-intensive and high technological value-added services”.
The two measures with their support services were presented and the critical questions asked by the partners were addressed during these presentations, raising further questions which in turn allowed to tackle some aspects in detail.
The InnoBridge partners positively evaluated the system to the support of research and innovation in terms of organization, resources and budget. The good ecosystem, the focused regional policy and the coordination by a joint department for research and innovation were considered as strengths. Furthermore, the networking among the regional actors and the complementarity of offered services were considered as well covering the full supply chain. Due to time constraints it was not possible to provide partners with sufficient information about the integration of the reviewed measure into the regional support system, and so partners could not assess this aspect. The budget was considered by all partners as nearly fully sufficient.
The call for proposals “Research and Innovation” (Investment Priority 1 b) received positive review because it fosters the cooperation between enterprises and research centres and allows funding of experimental development. The measure is considered to have a good regional impact.
Partners also pointed out some aspects which could be improved, like the lack of competition among regional R&D organisations, given by the presence of one university in South Tyrol, and the limited R&D institutions and resources. They made some interesting proposals to further improve the support to research and innovation in the region, considering that there is still room to tap the full potential of innovation, which can be done by trying something new (like the Open Innovation Platforms presented by the colleagues of Tampere region) and “adventure policy tools”. Inputs to further stimulate the innovation policy and to find actions and instruments to promote R&I which do not rely solely on the financial support were given.
The workshop was also the occasion for the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol to ask some questions to the partners in order to improve its system and these were related to the way to strengthen the internal organizational capacity of micro and small enterprises, to the specific strategic services offered by the institutions in order to support enterprises in the commercialization of products and services, and to the measures to support SMEs in the digitalization process. Interesting inputs were given by the InnoBridge partners.
For further information about the R&I policy of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South-Tyrol please visit http://www.provincia.bz.it/innovazione-ricerca/innovazione-ricerca-universita/
