Possible Ways of Innovation Support in Regions
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| Year of publication | 2009 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | At present, innovations play a key role in the economic development of regions, national economies and also global corporations. The innovation policy has been considered an inseparable part of the economic policy for a number of years; a lot of instruments known and used in other fields of the economic policy find their use in the policy focused on innovation support as well. The presented paper would like to begin the discussion of the possible ways of innovation support, with respect to the existing instruments and measures but with the emphasis laid on the regional aspects of the issue in general; or rather with respect to the growth of regional competitiveness and the elimination of regional disparities as it is regions what is considered the vital element of the transition to the knowledge society and economy and what can be the drive of the economic development and growth based on research and innovations. The significance of the place itself is generally acknowledged. Regions have some specifics which are dealt with by many economic theories (e.g. theory of learning regions). The basis of each field of economic policy is undoubtedly a spectrum of good managing strategic documents, the quality, efficiency and success of which increases with their political independence. We can assume that the innovation support is one of the fields that are the least politically sensitive as there is a great social agreement considering its importance. The analysis of innovation policy documents especially deals with the issue of their structure, both vertical and horizontal (hierarchical). It is also important to emphasize its connection with other policies and their strategic documents as it is possible to achieve considerable synergic effects in many cases (usually with the policy on science and research support, business support, employment policy, regional policy etc.). However, public policies are not only documents; they are also programmes focusing on the support of activities aimed at meeting their objectives. The innovation policy is no different. The European Union considers the programme support of innovations to be an inseparable part of the cohesion policy and this is one of the reasons why the individual member states incorporate the innovation support into the structure of their (operational) programmes. The authors ponder whether and in what way the expenditures of these programmes, or the implemented projects, can contribute to the development of regions. The example of the Czech Republic is used to show which areas related to innovations are supported. These are mainly the direct support of the introduction of innovations, innovative technologies and procedures into production; the support of establishing, developing and running innovation oriented entrepreneurial infrastructure with possible links to science and research centres; and the support of the formation of clusters, i.e. creating networks of economic entities with the purpose of reaching common objectives. The results of the programmes are also partially examined from the regional point of view, mainly with respect to the successfulness in gaining support. It is interesting to compare the numbers of successful projects and the amounts of the gained support, and also to study the link between the successfulness of regions in gaining support and their economic position within the national economy. A significant contribution of the paper is the assessment of the Prosperity Programme, which is used for the support of establishing and running science parks, and of the Clusters Programme, which is aimed at the support of establishing and activities of clusters, in relation to regional innovation strategies. It means whether new science parks are established in the regions where their establishment was assumed in the strategic documents and whether their existence is in agreement with these concepts. This is then demonstrated using specific examples. |
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