Evaluations of innovation programmes in selected European countries

Abstract

The incorporation of an evaluation procedure in a growing number of innovation policy programmes has now become an accepted feature in the public management of many countries. There already exists substantial experience on the conduct of such evaluations. The purpose of this paper is to present some sample evaluations of measures to promote innovation in a number of European OECD countries (Federal Republic of Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden). Reference will be made to four of them to illustrate the diversity of the evaluative approaches applied to the wide spectrum of measures to promote innovation. Each of these examples will be studied in detail in order to identify their characteristic features, particularly with attention to their causes, performance and their use in political decision processes. A conceptual framework will be presented in order to propose a typology of various forms of evaluation and to characterize the four case studies. It shows that concept and process of evaluations are strongly influences by the specific context and consensus or dissent on objectives and resources. The case studies give a clearer insight into the factors determining the use of results of evaluations; and to what extent the role of evaluations varies from pure legitimation to a systematic and rational basis for decision making in the area of technology policy. Innovation policy consists of government actions towards technological developments and their implementation in the economy. Innovation, in this case, is defined as the development of technologically new or improved products or techniques and their commercialization in the market or implementation within production. Often evaluation means the examination and assessment of the mode of action and of the effectiveness of government innovation policy. However, finding a general interpretation of the expression “evaluation of an innovation policy” presents greater difficulty, and here wide divergences are evident. In the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands, the term encompasses all forms of monitoring and assessing the operation and/or the effectiveness of an innovation policy. In Sweden, evaluation usually means performance of the a posteriori analysis of a measure. The terms “ex ante evaluation” and “follow-up evaluation” are respectively used for the explicit designation of prospective and retrospective analyses. In France, the term “evaluation” is associated with the notion of value. It often carries the connotation of a value assessment with the full monitoring implications of that expression.