CReATE - Creating a joint Research Agenda for ICT Innovation in the Creative Industries across Europe
The EU-project CReATE is funded under the “Regions of Knowledge” initiative, which aims to strengthen the research potential of European regions, in particular by encouraging and supporting the development, across Europe, of regional research-driven clusters. In line with this objective, CReATE supports European co-operation of innovative clusters in the field of creative industries. This sector is one of the emerging lead markets of the European knowledge economy, and is concentrated in highly innovative regional clusters. The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play a key role in the creative industries in developing internationally competitive products and services. Against this background, the project intends to activate and enable a more systematic use of the research and innovation potential of the ICT.
CReATE will especially bring the benefits of research to SMEs, which form the largest group in those clusters. SMEs, due to lack of resources, are limited in carrying out their own R&D activities, thus, tight collaboration with R&D organisations as well as with multinational enterprises (MNEs) having own R&D capacities is crucial. CReATE will address this challenge by facilitating capacity building of SMEs to develop collaborative strategies such as the “open innovation”.
To realise the above mentioned objectives, the project will
- develop concepts and common methodology for analysing regional research-based clusters of the creative industries;
- analyse the state of play and the most promising technology and market potential in each region regarding ICT innovation in creative industries;
- prioritise and harmonise the outcomes of the different regional strategy processes in the form of a Cross-Regional Joint Research Agenda;
- initiate cross-regional projects and business plans, and in the end
- increase the impact and European outreach of the project through concrete dissemination and training measures.
The development of a Joint Research Agenda in the field of ICT will enable regional actors (both public and private) to improve the focus, effectiveness and efficiency of their 'policies', and to reach higher mobilisation of RTDI investments for their implementation. In the process of agenda development, strategic policy and management instruments such as innovation audit will be applied to supplement the conventional instruments such as cluster evaluation and development.
In addition, CReATE aims to promote synergies between regional, national, EU and research policies, and to facilitate intra- and trans-regional co-operation and knowledge exchange among cluster development agencies, researchers, SMEs and multinational enterprises. The European outreach of the project will be achieved by transforming the project methodology into an easy-to-use toolkit for all European actors, and by designing and implementing related training courses for a number of interested regions and other clusters.
In the framework of CReATE, SEZ cooperates with the MFG Baden-Württemberg as well as further European partners from Rhône-Alpes (Imaginove), Piemonte (CSP, Politecnico Torino, and Local Authority for Research, Innovation and Internationalisation Policy of Piemont Region) and West Midlands (Advantage West Midlands).
Building upon the know-how generated in the RegStrat and Connect2Ideas projects to implement strategic policy intelligence at the regional and cluster level, SEZ develops regional strategy processes, supports elaborating a research agenda, conducts training activities on regional cluster management and consults the project partners on all strategic questions.
Duration: 03/2008 - 12/2010
Countries: France, Germany, Italy, UK
Contact:
Dr. rer. nat. Guenter Clar, Tel. 0711 123 4017
Email: clar@steinbeis-europa.de
Dr. rer. nat. Björn Sautter, Tel. 0711 123 4028
Email: sautter@steinbeis-europa.de
Sabine Hafner-Zimmermann, Tel. 0711 123 4025
Email: hafner@steinbeis-europa.de