Activities

Pilot Regional Innovation Partnership Projects

A major component of the EU-DRIVERS project was the involvement of Pilot regional innovation partnership projects.  The projects provided a core base for practical knowledge sharing about routes to improving regional cooperation between universities, public authorities (local/regional government) and business or community organizations to encourage regional innovation. Lessons from the pilot projects formed the basis for development of good practice guides and development of a sustainable leadership development programme for relevant stakeholders at the regional level.

These pilot ‘showcase’ projects, involving the triple helix stakeholders from a university, public authority (local/regional government) and business or community organization were developed as the project evolved. Each pilot project was a working example of how the three stakeholders have come together to create a major impact on a key aspect of the regional economic or social infrastructure, addressing a major regional need.  Projects were varied in terms of sector and geographical areas.

The Four two-day leadership workshops aimed at developing participants’ leadership and boundary-spanning skills through practical knowledge-sharing regarding the show case projects. They explored all of the elements involved in making regional cooperation work – including issues such as motivators and barriers  to cooperation, strategy (regional and organisational), leadership, governance and funding.

State-of the art Knowledge on Regional Innovation

Three Annual Reports on the latest knowledge on innovation issues have been produced, based on desk research, relevant literature review and gathering of example of good practices from within and beyond the partnership. These annual reports served as the basic material for the conferences.

Three Conferences on Regional innovation

 The project organized three conferences which served as a common gathering where mutual learning and trust could be developed between all regional actors from universities (deans), private companies and regional governments on the basis of specific issues where action could be taken to advance regional innovation. These conferences took stock on the regional innovation partnership projects and had the state-of-the-art reports as their starting point. They linked to EU policy and instruments.

Other Publications

Connecting University to Regional European Growth, A practical Guide, John Goddard
Understanding the critical role of universities to support strategic regional developments

National Innovation and the Academic Research Enterprise
Public Policy in Global Perspective, David D. Dill and Frans A. van Vught (Ed.)

MODERN report, University Engagement and Regional Innovation 2011

 

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Testimonial

EU-DRIVERS conferences

The Third Annual Conference on Building Capacity for Collaborative Partnerships took place in Brussels on
20 September 2012

This project is funded with support from the European Commission.
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