European diversity : regional innovation potential in transportation

Abstract

Transportation is essential for European competitiveness. While the transportation system guarantees location quality for the economy and citizens, the transportation industry provides jobs and strengthens the economy in general. Recently the transportation sector has had to face challenges coming up with new developments. Investments had to be limited due to the financial and economic crisis, new competitors are arising on the global market, climate change requires action affecting transportation and European regional disparities need to be overcome – also and especially when it comes to transportation. The change requires new strategies to adapt to and also to actively shape the process. The European Commission aims to support the transportation sector by promoting innovation on a regional level. To ensure successful effects of funding, financial support should not be spread but focus on regions of highest innovation potential in transportation. The European FP7-funded project METRIC has developed a method to measure innovation potential in transportation applying it to the regions in Europe. The results should serve as a basis for funding distribution and should also identify certain types of regional innovation patterns. This paper describes the analytical approach to measuring the innovation potential in the transportation sector, also showing first results. While the methodological approach has been developed the results have to be considered preliminary. The project will run until March 2015; the work is still in progress. Already at this stage certain patterns and types of regional innovation can be distinguished showing that enabling factors, including funding, are not always connected with innovation output and at the same time are not preconditions for innovation. Besides this, some regions show a connection between funding and innovation in transportation allowing the authors to identify the success factors for innovation in a later step.