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Innovation Voucher Schemes - What makes them successful and for whom?

By Esteban Pelayo, Director of EURADA

 

This month EURADA took part as a keynote speaker during a discussion of innovation vouchers organised by the Policy Learning Platform (PLP) of the Interreg Europe programme. During the session, participants had the opportunity to explore these vouchers, small credit lines granted by regional and national governments to SMEs, that allow them to establish new products and processes in their business through the acquisition of services. These services are dispensed by knowledge providers, such as research centres, universities, and consulting firms. The aim of this discussion was searching the best way to foster cooperation between industry and university, and to promote SMEs research and innovation activities using these innovation vouchers.

EURADA we shared the experiences of development agencies using vouchers for the articulation of regional innovation ecosystems. There are some outstanding initiatives such as the InnoVoucher project. This established the basis for a European label for innovation vouchers that would allow the integration of providers coming from different regions, widening the internal possibilities for companies located in a certain territory. This European initiative was led by the development agency of the region of Murcia (INFO) and also involved Sviluppo Marche (Svim), the best European development agency of 2019.  

 

An effective tool to bring newcomers to the innovation ecosystem 

The innovation vouchers allow regional innovation ecosystems to succeed in competitiveness by attracting new SMEs and connecting them to innovation services and by stimulating the change of those already established. 

During the discussion, the Tampere Region Innovation Voucher was analysed as a model to attract our participants to the innovation ecosystem of this Finnish region. Some of the practical lessons learned in the framework of the Interreg ESSPO project, facilitating the adoption of better regional policies for the support of SMEs, were also discussed. As part of that, EURADA had carried out a comprehensive study of European voucher systems in cooperation with the Development Agency of Centre-Val de Loire Region (Dev'Up). 

Participants in the expert meeting identified the successful factors for innovation voucher initiatives, highlighting communication. Considering that the purpose is to influence the entrepreneurs’ strategy, the impact of the voucher schemes becomes bigger when we specifically target newcomers that have not yet used innovation providers.  

The stability of the policy and its alignment with the strategies for economic growth of the territory (smart specialisation) was also praised. With this comprehensive approach, the innovation voucher scheme becomes a tool that launch the participation of entrepreneurs in a public initiative that will last longer with a well-design policy mix. 

A wide range of applications 

Regional authorities use innovation vouchers for diverse purposes, such us for the alleviation of the effects of the Covid-19 crisis, or during brexit, to allow companies to engage expert services to adapt their internationalisation strategies. Considering the Green Deal, EURADA presented the C-Voucher project, as one of the first initiatives funded by the European Commission to promote Circular Economy in the value chains of companies. Through it, business projects are supported with grants and advice is provided. The Galician Innovation Agency (Gain) participates in this project, financed by the H2020 programme, with a cascade finance scheme that allocated €4.2 million over four calls. 

 

Vouchers are going to accelerate their use in 2021-2027 

The main conclusion of the meeting was that innovation voucher systems will be further developed in the coming years at regional and European level. These initiatives will be present in the cascading projects and challenges that are included in Pillar II of Horizon Europe and especially in the connection between ecosystems in Pillar III of this innovation and technological development programme. Cheque systems have also been used for digitisation and it is foreseeable that the IHDs and the Digital Europe programme will include it. Also, the support to SMEs within the interregional innovation investments (I3) initiative will foreseeably be done using innovation vouchers that facilitate the use of infrastructures between participating regions with the same smart specialisation strategy priorities. In conclusion, the use of such vouchers will accelerate during the next period and we must keep abreast of such developments. 

 

Further information  

  • Interreg article about the meeting. Interreg Europe Website.