General Strategy

The work plan of the project is articulated in seven work packages (WP) with one of the partners taking the lead of each. WP1 “Management”, and WP7 “Dissemination” will cover the whole time span of the project:  WP’s 2,3,4,5, and 6 constitute the main body of this proposal and can be summarized as follows:

WP2 will provide a ‘State of the art’ overview of impact assessment practices. The overall goal is to collect previous and running experiences at different levels of analysis. This will allow to improve the understanding of the fields in which impact assessment exercises are more frequently performed, and to perform a cross-sectional analysis to identify the main characteristics of these experiences.

WPs 3, 4, and 5 focus on the three particular areas of interest of policy making in the field of RTDI s highlighted in section 1.1. The WP’s follow a common framework. WP3 and 4 assess the (socio)-economic impacts of public funding of, respectively, private R&D investment and cooperation between public research and private enterprises. WP5 aims at improving the management of research institutions and universities.

A common conceptual framework will be used for WP3, WP4, and WP5. This framework takes into account that a differentiated approach is needed as the impact of public funding policies/measures is assessed in different ways and that there exists (combinations of) different (T1 ) envisaged outcomes, (T2 ) levels of analysis, and (T3 ) challenges when assessing the impacts of public financing of RTDI over time (investigated in WP2). Also, in each of the three WP’s, particular attention will be paid to the possibilities for (T4 ) harmonisation of impact assessment among Member (and Associated) States and Regions, and efforts will be made to frame impact assessment exercises in a (T5 ) future oriented appropriate policy mix.

(T1) WP3, WP4, and WP5 will start by specifying the outcomes/objectives of public intervention in each policy area under consideration. In this respect, a distinction has to be made between economic and non-economic (social, cultural, environmental …) impacts. A distinction may also be needed between mission oriented research (i.e. more "applied type" research) and blue-sky research without any specific objective other than knowledge creation.

(T2) The methodology for measurement of impact of policy measures and instruments will take into account and present (best) practices at three levels of analysis:
- the level of the system (economy, society): (aggregated) systemic impact of knowledge-related policies on society (covering economic and non-economic impact),
- the institutional level: research policy impact on specific actors of the National Innovation Systems (e.g. universities, local authorities, business enterprise sector),
- the level of the individual participant/research actor (e.g. an individual researcher, a research group) in a horizontal, thematic, structural or sector-specific programme/measure.

Conceptual framework for the study of each of the topics in WP3-WP4-WP5.

(T3) Impact assessment studies are confronted with different challenges. These include measurement challenges (different instruments are used for measurement, e.g. surveys, interviews, econometric modelling, but current efforts fail to capture the full range of impacts of public research), methodological challenges and attribution problems (including causality, time lags, identification and selectivity problems …), as well as data challenges. Data requirements depend on the envisaged outcomes of public intervention in research. Use can be made of existing data or more comprehensive data sets can be developed. The exercise will confront data needs for impact assessment with data availability and provide guidelines for possible improvements and harmonisation among Member States. It will generate recommendations for the development of a hierarchy of measures/impacts within different timelines (short term, mid term and long term), preparing a checklist of indicators (technological, economic and social), defining criteria for prioritising the selection of indicators and selection of relevant indicators that best reflect the effects and impacts.

(T4) A number of case studies are planned to examine the scope for harmonisation of impact assessment among Member (and Associated) States and Regions. The idea is to extend existing studies at national or regional level towards other countries and to refine existing studies at national level in order to: perform ongoing studies as “live” pilot cases; to check the potential transferability of the methodology to other countries; to check potential scaling up of the methodology; and to share best practices. Also, from a methodological point of view, guidelines will be included for the improvement of the "knowledge-relation" between policy makers (having more or less clear conceptions of what the needs are) and practitioners (having the methods).

Areas of interest for further research and data improvement will be highlighted. It needs to be emphasized that the project goal is not to fund national exercises as such.

(T5) Assessing the usefulness of impact assessment tools in the development of a ‘future oriented’ appropriate R&D policy mix. The contribution of the results from WP3 to 5 will be examined with the view to design a more appropriate and future oriented policy mix. This policy mix can be defined as “the combination of policy instruments, which interact to influence the quantity and quality of a selected policy goal.

Task 5 (T) of WP3, WP4, and WP5 are closely related and prepare the work for WP6. This WP will integrate the results from WP2 to 5. The focus will be on understanding and agreement among project participants on policy elements in play when assessing and drawing conclusions from different practices for stimulating private R&D-investment, improving the cooperation between research institutes and private enterprises and for improving the management of research institutions and universities. In the WP, suggestions will be made for a possible future oriented appropriate policy mix.