Key tools to assess and improve soft innovation policies

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The competitiveness of SMEs and their resilience with respect to the global economic turmoil is certainly strongly linked to their capacity to innovate. However, innovation dynamics aren’t only dependent on R&D and technological change, but often rely on less evident, less formalized and more difficult to assess factors, mainly involving organizational and relational dimensions. This is relevant both for those regions in which medium and low-tech sectors and very small/micro businesses lead the local economy and for those territories with a strong presence of economic sectors related to social innovation, less dependent on formal R&D. The common challenge faced by project partners, coming from 7 regions across Europe, is that of devising new tools and indicators that allow them to better understand and assess non-R&D-driven innovation dynamics, with a strong emphasis on the direct involvement of the policy beneficiaries in the process of policy design, monitoring and evaluation. The overall project objective is therefore to improve the capability of public policy-makers to develop efficient policies supporting non-formal, soft and open innovation processes in the regional actors, with a focus on non-R&D -driven and social innovation. The expected changes are the improved ability of partners’ monitoring and evaluation systems in measuring and assessing the related innovation dynamics and an increased awareness across EU regions about tools and methods for soft innovation monitoring and assessment. The main outputs are: • 7 Study Visits, 4 Thematic Workshops, 1 Interregional Learning Meetings; • 7 policy instruments improved through the development and implementation of 7 Action Plans; • 14 (at least) Good Practices shared in the Policy Learning Platform, 4 Brief Technical Notes, 5 videostorytelling and 1 videotutorial published on the project website.

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