Good Practice
| Bretagne (FR) | Navarra (ES) | Puglia (IT) |
| Flanders (BE) | Nyugat-Dunantul (HU) | Schleswig-Holstein (DE) |
| Lower Austria (AT, lead partner) | Provence-Alpes-Côte d´Azur (FR) | Wielkopolska (PL) |
Lower Austria (AT, lead partner)
Innovation Assessment Methodology Lower Austria (I-AM Lower Austria)
The Innovation Assessment Methodology Lower Austria (I-AM Lower Austria) is a coherent part of the Continuous Improvement Process of the Regional Innovation System Lower Austria (CIP RIS NÖ). I-AM Lower Austria is a comprehensive system of different monitoring and evaluation tools for Lower Austria’s innovation policy to gain deep insight into the results and the impact of state aids and further innovation support services with the aim to improve single innovation policy instruments as well as to coordinate the overall regional innovation system with all involved actors/intermediaries. Furthermore I-AM Lower Austria provides required information for the regional government to justify the public budget spent for regional innovation policy and to promote its success. The comprehensive monitoring system is one success factor why Lower Austria has won the award for the most innovative region in Europe in 2008.
I-AM Lower Austria consists of several tools for different target groups and different objectives:
Monitoring and Evaluation of regional state aid programs consists of in-process monitoring to allow a re-orientation of/additional help for the supported projects if required and an ex-post evaluation about the impact of the individual projects on the beneficiaries and about the firms’ satisfaction with the management of the state aid programs.
Large scale questionnaire survey among Lower Austrian firms: The monitoring of companies’ needs and their usage of regional (public) innovation support is carried out approx. every 5 years. These surveys give very valuable insight in firms’ knowledge of the Lower Austrian innovation system and their satisfaction with the offered services.
The BSC Balanced Scorecard Methodology is used to define the objectives and target figures for the 6 pillars of Lower Austria’s economic strategy (including innovation) and to break them down on intermediary level as well as on program level. Linked to the BSC single actors of the innovation system will start with annual questionnaire surveys about the results and impacts of the offered services on the companies as beneficiaries.
IMPACTSCAN and ARISE methodology is used to get a structured overview over the budget split according to the pillars of Lower Austria’s economic strategy, the involved (type of) actors and (the type of) innovation support services. The IMPACTSCAN tool allows comparisons with other European regions taking the regional macroeconomic framework (based on the SCINNOPOLI approach) into consideration.
Based on the IMPACTSCAN and ARISE approach detailed interviews about the impact of individual services on regional companies as beneficiaries allow the development of impact profiles for single innovation services and a reliable extrapolation of the macroeconomic impact of the Lower Austrian innovation policy.
NÖ Innovationsindex (Innovation Index Lower Austria) with continuous quarterly data gathering of macroeconomic indicators (similar to European Innovation Scoreboard) and comparisons on national Austrian level
European Community Innovation Survey (CIS) and Austrian complete R&D inventory count (FuE Vollerhebung in Österreich) are initiatives on European and national level. The enlargement of the sample of Lower Austrian firms allows a representative regional analysis of the innovation performance of Lower Austria’s enterprises as separate order of the Lower Austrian government to the responsible organisation of Statistik Austria.