ICTlogy

Abstract:

The European Green Deal and the unprecedented European effort to foster socio-economic transformation and build a resilient and long-term sustainable EU bring to the fore the need for an upgraded role for innovation. The deep transformations of production and consumption systems are a momentous occasion to innovate to build stronger, as well as cleaner and fairer economies and societies. However, the necessary transformations do not seem likely with innovation policy as usual. To stand a fair chance of having the required impact, new innovation policies must address two important prerequisites: First, the local and regional stakeholders including citizens, enterprises, knowledge institutions, local authorities must be meaningfully involved. Second, policy must strive for transformative, systemlevel, innovation in enabling and accelerating the necessary transformations. The European Commission and the European Committee of the Regions launch the Partnerships for Regional Innovation fully recognising the role of all levels of government in realising the European Green Deal. These are renewed partnerships across all implicated stakeholders to align efforts and co-create transformation pathways, as a means to amplify impact by working across silos. The Partnerships for Regional Innovation aspire to become a strategic framework for innovation-driven territorial transformation, linking EU priorities with national plans and place-based opportunities and challenges. This framework considers societal wellbeing and environmental gains as essential purposes for innovation. This means going beyond, but not excluding, innovating for economic prosperity and calls for considering societal and environmental impacts of transformation throughout the whole policy intervention: from its conceptualisation to the action on the ground. The aim is to extend and amplify the strategic potential of innovation to inspire, influence and cross-fertilise other sectoral policies, such as industrial, employment, education, environmental and social policies, which have so far largely operated in silos. The Partnerships are launched as a pilot project, in a spirit of co-creation by practitioners, stakeholders and experts. This Playbook is the initial support document for a pilot phase engaging Member States, regions and groups of regions who have volunteered to co-develop and test the approach, centred on a selection of practical policy tools. These tools aim primarily at enhancing the coordination and directionality of regional, national and EU innovation policies to implement Europe’s green and digital transitions and to tackle the innovation divide in the EU. The partnerships will be designed from a multi-level perspective, paying attention to the needs of local, regional and national policy makers and opening pathways for their closer alignment and cooperation. In particular, they aim to address two types of fragmentation that affect the EU innovation ecosystem: the fragmentation of funding instruments and policies in territories, and misalignments between regional/ national and EU initiatives.