Innovation Management Consulting

INNOVA Europe leads international Consortium in charge of the European
benchmark of filtering tools for youth protection online - SIP Benchmark II

Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Luxembourg 19th of January 2010,

An international Consortium composed of INNOVA Europe in Brussels, Stiftung Digitale Chancen in Berlin and Cybion in Rome was appointed by the European Commission to carry out the SIP-Benchmark study on filtering tools in the framework of the Safer Internet Programme over the next three years.
Although filtering the Internet is often judged as Janus-faced, it can help to safeguard children and young people from being confronted with age inappropriate content. The study aims at assisting parents and other adults in charge of minors in the decision making process.
"We know that the effectiveness of filtering tools also depends on their usability and comprehensibility to the end-users," says Jutta Croll, Managing Director of Stiftung Digitale Chancen, "and we have learned from the Youth Protection Roundtable that parents all over Europe are seeking for advice in this field."
Therefore, SIP-Benchmark II will focus on both effectiveness and usability in equal measure. Around 30 different filtering tools covering the main tools present on the market will be tested in a six-monthly benchmarking cycle. The results will be presented in a user-friendly and comprehensible way to ensure that parents will make use of them.

About INNOVA Europe
INNOVA Europe is the front company of the INNOVA Group, currently one of the leading private European consultancy groups in innovation. Since 2000, when it was founded, INNOVA Europe has been delivering highly specialised services in innovation management, Good Practice analysis, Benchmarking and Impact Assessments, as well as research exploitation, technology transfer, and Information and Communication Technologies.

INNOVA Europe coordinated two of the largest European Networks in charge of Innovation and Technology Transfer: the IRC (Innovation Relay Centres) & IRE (Innovating Regions in Europe) Networks.

About the Digital Opportunities Foundation
Since 2002 the Digital Opportunities Foundation together with its partner organisations is working on bridging the digital divide. The goal of the foundation is to make people interested in the opportunities of the Internet and to support them in exploring the digital world. From 2006 to 2009 the foundation was co-ordinator of the Youth Protection Roundtable within the Safer Internet Programme.
The Digital Opportunities Foundation was founded in Berlin in January 2002. The Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth have taken on the patronage.

About Cybion
Cybion is a Company founded in 1996 with branches in Italy and France. Cybion performs business and competitive intelligence on the Internet.The objectives and mission of Cybion consist in the provision of customised information services starting from the Internet and exploiting its huge potential as information source offering to its clients the possibility of receiving highly customised and relevant information on their markets, their competitors and any other issue that helps small and big players to be constantly aware on what’s going on in their specific business area.

Press Contact
Digital Opportunities Foundation / Stiftung Digitale Chancen
Jutta Croll, Managing Director
Fasanenstraße 3
10623 Berlin
Tel.: 030/437277-30
Fax: 030/437277-39
E-Mail: jcroll@digitale-chancen.de
Internet: www.digitale-chancen.de and www.yprt.eu

Multiple Framework contract for provision of external expertise on regulatory and policy issues within the fields of Research and Innovation Policy (Lot 3)

The European Parliament (EP) issued a multiple framework service contract for ad-hoc, short term services providing expertise on policies and legislation covering several fields including industry, telecommunication, research, energy and climate change policies.

INNOVA Europe and its partner organisation, Inno, have been selected for the award of the above mentioned framework contract.

This framework contract covers in particular issues relating to:

• 7th framework programme and specific initiatives stemming from this (Article 169, Joint Technology Initiatives)
• Joint Research Centre and COST initiative
• CORDIS initiative
• European Space Policy
• General themes on basic and applied research (in areas such as bio- and nanotechnology, technology transfer and innovation policy as regards demonstration and pilot project phases including PAXIS and PRO INNO programmes)

INNOVA Europe applies for National Dissemination Point for Luxembourg

In April 2009 INNOVA Europe applied to the call for tender published by the URBACT secretariat relative to the provision of services for the diffusion in national languages on websites of information concerning the URBACT II programme towards the city players, and for the production of information for the URBACT II Programme, so-called “national dissemination points” for Luxembourg.

Inno Learning Platform enters its 3rd learning cycle

INNOVA Europe is the coordinator of the INNO-Learning Platform (ILP), a flagship project commissioned by DG Enterprise and Industry Unit D.2 - Support for Innovation, which aims to improve the effectiveness of innovation support in Europe by stimulating more and better transnational cooperation among innovation agencies across Member States and regions.

In the third learning cycle, which will last until the end of 2009, the ILP will notably focus on the following two tasks:

• paving the way for true partnerships around innovation policy support across Europe (and possibly beyond). This will notably entail supporting preparations for peer reviews between innovation agencies to search for better practices in providing innovation support services, and supporting preparations for setting up a transnational good practice exchange  scheme between  innovation agencies based on a twinning concept. In time, this role will be taken over by Inno Partnering Forum (part of the second phase of PRO INNO Europe®) where innovation agencies will develop and implement joint tools and programmes to foster innovation.

• assist in the public consultation process on ‘more  effective  innovation  support  in  Europe’ to be  launched by DG Enterprise and Industry at the beginning of 2009. To support this consultation, a web-based questionnaire will be developed and promotional activities will be undertaken to enhance the response rate from target audiences.

IRE network strengthening regional innovation

IRE Secretariat has come to an end. The project coordinated by INNOVA with the support of INNOVA Europe terminated last December 2008. The action has been considered very successful by all stakeholders.

New impact appraisal of Regional innovation policy measures on automotive industry competitiveness

Work on assessing impacts of regional support measures to automotive industry complexes by INNOVA Europe's Innovation policy officer, Dr. Bart Kamp, has recently been released by the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (Inderscience publications).

The article reports on a search after better practices in policy support to enhance the competitiveness of automotive activities on a regional level.

Based on a Europe-wide inventory of such initiatives, an initial long list was drawn up. This long list was reduced on the basis of a number of ‘filter criteria’, such as preliminary success signals, the presumed causal relationship of the measure vis-à-vis industrial competitiveness and the specificity of the measure. The resulting short list was subjected to a more severe evaluation. This consisted notably of gathering verifiable proof of performance and of positive effects sorted by the measures.

In the end, a number of remarkable success cases were identified. However, on the whole, it appeared that only with regard to very few initiatives was it possible to establish a proven track record and/or contrast its positive causal effect on the health and dynamics of regional automotive activities. An important conclusion and implication of the research results is that there is a strong need for more systematic evaluation of the performance of regional initiatives that aim to support the automotive industry.

More information can be found in the attachment PDF file 'Impact Appraisal.pdf' in below.