Effective Reproducible Model of Innovation Systems

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SME's are a key part of the economic fabric of the ERMIS regions and it has faced tremendous social and economic transformation over the last two decades, suffering increased competitiveness in the global economy. Despite public sector financial and technical support programs to foster innovation, the return on investments from such initiatives and policies within SME's is often considered insufficient. Yet, SME's represent a vital source of economic growth and innovation for a region as long as they are able to grow to a critical size allowing them to finance their development and market innovations. Today, with the financial and economic downturn and resulting job losses in large enterprises, the Lisbon Strategy’s aims and objectives,notably on the importance of the EU innovative SME sector have become even more acute. More than ever, the innovation capacity of SME's is vital to achieve economic growth again. It is this innovation capacity that is at the core of the ERMIS project. ERMIS partners have access to innovation support structures such as knowledge centres, incubators and venture capitalists. However, the regional innovation performance depends more on the interaction between structures as on their individual performance. Local innovation policies solely dedicated to support specific tools or instruments do not generally induce sufficient dynamic to generate collective performance to support SME growth and competitiveness. ERMIS partners aim to enhance the leverage effect of their local innovation policies and systems by developing an effective systemic approach involving the whole value chain of political and economic actors dedicated to SME's. In other words, ERMIS partners have the "pieces of the puzzle" and this project will help them fit the pieces together more efficiently. The ERMIS objective is to jointly develop effective and transferable governance models for Local Innovation Systems (LIS) dedicated to fostering value innovation in SMEs. To achieve this, ERMIS will exchange effective LIS tools and methods; design & exchange a governance framework and methodology to manage a LIS; design a set of governance and management guidelines; involve public stakeholders outside the project wherever relevant; involve policy makers to validate policy recommendations for implementation in the local and regional policies and Structural Funds. ERMIS will achieve these step by step through pre-modelisation of LIS based on existing research, SWOT analysis, an assessment of partners' LIS performance and a benchmark and a formalisation of "next practice" to prepare the ground for transfers in partner's territories. ERMIS brings together a balanced partnership with public authorities from Spain, France, Italy, Rumania, The Netherlands, Hungary, Denmark, Greece and Portugal. In addition a number of local actors involved in SME support, such as innovation centres, Chambers of Commerce and incubators are partners in the project.

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