Better Policy Instruments for High Innovation Projects in the European Regions
The HIGHER project has been designed to tackle the following challenges, common to all the involved territories: the need to improve the innovative character of the innovation projects financed through ESIF; the need to improve a stronger public administrations role as innovation drivers; the need to improve science-industry collaboration; the need to improve private capital investments in R&D projects; and the need to improve the clustering approach. In this common framework, and starting from a set of national/regional policy instruments identified by the project partners and co-financed by the ESIF under the RIS3, the project overall objective is to achieve innovative models of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) suitable to mobilise investment in related smart specialisation areas, fostering an entrepreneurial discovery process in driving the innovation process of the policy instruments addressing RIS3. This will be pursued by promoting a European perspective and ensuring the durability and the transfer of the achieved results. The role of the public authorities as innovation drivers will be enhanced, in the process, as well as their position as “innovation demand hub” in the knowledge-driven economy. The project will strengthen the participation of relevant innovation-related stakeholders, following the quadruple helix approach, involving them in relevant activities. The main project outputs are: 9 analyses of the policy instruments addressed and 200 related final reports for partners and innovation stakeholders; the setting-up of an innovation experience digital hub based on capitalised online tools  for project partners and innovation experts; 36 meetings with the stakeholders groups; 3 interregional innovation summits,4 interregional meetings, 6 workshops and 6 study visits organized in the scope of the project learning path; and 9 action plans for policy instruments’ improvement drawn-up.