From innovative ideas to successful businesses the importance of local innovation ecosystems and how to get them

Transcription

1 From innovative ideas to successful businesses the importance of local innovation ecosystems and how to get them Dominique Foray Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Swiss Council for Science and Innovation 2017 Event of the Eastern Partnership Panel on Research and Innovation 21 September Minsk

2

3 Expert-Kommission für Forschung und Innovation

4

5 From innovative ideas to successful businesses What matters : the local innovation ecosystem in which small and innovative companies are operating Innovation requires not only general framework conditions the basics have to be right but also specific capabilities and specific infrastructures relative to sectors or technologies These capacities and capabilities knowledge, skilled people, technologies, services are crucial for each SME but SMEs cannot produce them in house Centrality of ecosystems to provide these capacities In top regions, they are provided by industrial associations, large companies, universities and PROs through spillovers of research, training and diffusion of technologies to suppliers.

6 But in many countries particularly in developing and transition regions, these sources of complementary capabilities are weak or have never existed and there are large holes in the innovation ecosystem «Firms are home alone» (S.Berger) Even start ups with great ideas and a sufficient access to seed money cannot do it all in house. They need suppliers, qualified workers and engineers, expertise beyond their own as well as innovative finance In most cases the current ecosystem is too poor to provide all these capabilities.

7 Let s be more specific to really understand the policy challenge Uniform measures that target financial markets, education and R&D directly are necessary but not enough Innovation and production in a particular field require a set of rather specific inputs physical installation and technologies, workers with particular skills, a set of specific intermediate inputs and services, etc.. Biotech in fisheries, ICT in footwear industry, digital innovation in agrofood Each new and innovative activity requires custom-made inputs some private, many public! This is haute couture..not ready to wear What should be done?

8 From idea..

9 ..to impact!

10 Rationale for smart specialisation There is a tension between providing generic and agregate capabilities to the economy and inputs and providing specific capabilities and inputs to each individual project First case: can be done at reasonable cost but miss most of the target Second case : very relevant but extraordinarily costly and requires too many very detailed information about coordination and capabilities issues The point is to identify/generate local agregates of a few projects and capacities that are related, connected, positionned in the same part of the product space of the economy and provide the specific inputs and infrastructures for each local agregation of actors and projects as well as support innovative activities.

11 Product space Specific capacities and inputs: For who? In this case: better to provide only agreggate and generic capacities and inputs Specific capacities and inputs: For 4 microsystems of innovation

12 Smart specialisation strategies Identifying innovative domains where there are existing capacities and potentials, some entrepreneurial activities and we see opportunities for innovation Supporting the development of the ecosystem Provision of the specific public inputs (specialised skills, technologies, services) R&D support programs Public venture fund specialised in the specific domain For example if the government thinks that medical drugs is a sector it may want to see develop, the public agency will identify gaps in the ecosystem and fill them, look for projects in this area, etc..

13 Choices matter! What priorities, what sectors, what areas? For nations that wish to engage with the international economic system, there is a large number of entry points Needed: putting in place a robust and transparent process to identify priorities (potential domains of specialisation) to support the development of local agregates of innovative projects and actions

14 Two «valleys» and two futures Cartes sinos Portugal

15 Vale do Rio dos Sinos

16 Northern Portugal

17 Galicia

18 Island of Crete

19 The future of smart specialisation S3 approach is going to be continued beyond 2020 perhaps with some changes (but more in implementation mechanisms than the essence) «Dispersed spending with limited targeting often the result of localistic rentseeking behaviours or redistributive political economy equilibria may prove wasteful and achieve significantly less, in both more able and low capacity regions» (Crescenzi et al., 2017)

20 Thank you!