Call for Expression of Interest: Innovation Partnerships

 Call for Expression of Interest: Innovation Partnerships (98.9 kB, Adobe Acrobat document)

1 Context

The European Mobile & Mobility Industries Alliance follows the innovation policy frame set by the European Commission’s Innovation Union flagship and is a strategic initiative bringing together policy makers and industry representatives as announced in ”An Integrated Industrial Policy for the Globalisation Era” flagship. Galileo and EGNOS, Europe’s own Global Navigation Satellite Systems, which are currently Europe’s biggest joint technology projects – one is planned to be operable in 2014/15 and the other is operable and certified – will help to support the accuracy, the reliability and variety of location-based services offered worldwide, services that are at the centre of the European Mobile & Mobility Industries Alliance. In addition, the first launches of the COPERNICUS satellites are planned until mid-2014 opening up further chances for competitive mobile services.

To fully unlock the potential of the mobile & mobility industries required new policy approaches. Therefore, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry established the “European Mobile & Mobility Industries Alliance (EMMIA)” in December 2011 following a call for proposals. EMMIA is a cross-sectoral policy initiative that combines policy learning with additional concrete actions on better access to finance and on large-scale demonstrators. It is an open platform that brings together policy-makers and business support practitioners from all over Europe including European organisations like the European Commission, the European Space Agency ESA, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute ETSI and the European GNSS (Global Satellite Navigation Systems) Agency GSA. EMMIA considers concrete specific steps which should be taken at European level to support service innovation in the context of the Europe 2020 Strategy.

The EMMIA Policy Learning Platform Members comprise currently 17 committed regions in Europe, which discuss in a series of meetings the role of innovation in mobile services in order to attain the Europe 2020 goals of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Together it evaluates policy rationales behind successful service innovation initiatives both at regional and EU level to assess what can be done, notably at European level, to promote the power of mobile service innovation in order to transform the economy.

The EMMIA Policy Learning Platform Members comprise currently 17 committed regions in Europe, which discuss in a series of meetings the role of innovation in mobile services in order to attain the Europe 2020 goals of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Together it evaluates policy rationales behind successful service innovation initiatives both at regional and EU level to assess what can be done, notably at European level, to promote the power of mobile service innovation in order to transform the economy.

The EMMIA Policy Learning Platform will present its final report and recommendations during the Italian Council Presidency in autumn 2014 at a conference in Rome. This conference will be co-hosted by the Province of Rome as one of the core partners and members to the EMMIA Policy Learning Platform.

The EMMIA Policy Learning Platform will present its final report and recommendations during the Italian Council Presidency in autumn 2014 at a conference in Rome. This conference will be co-hosted by the Province of Rome as one of the core partners and members to the EMMIA Policy Learning Platform.

Currently, a Guidebook of the EMMIA Policy Learning Platform is about to be validated and discussed during the 4th EMMIA Policy Learning Platform Meeting at the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria to the EU in Brussels on 20 Nov. 2013. Its findings are deeply rooted in previous work of Europe INNOVA and PRO INNO Europe programs both initiated by the European Commission, like e.g. the report of the Expert Panel on Service Innovation on “The Transformative Power of Service Innovation”, or the “Smart Guide to Service Innovation” published in the Guidebook series of DG Enterprise and Industries. Recently, EMMIA PLP ran extended interviews and desktop research on five model regions supporting mobile services within a more systemic approach through integration of service innovation using its catalytic role to shape new markets and create new business opportunities by touching a manifold of aspects of policies like innovation partnerships and support in emerging industries. Based on these findings the Policy Learning Platform and its members like to start a discussion and seek for innovation partnerships.

2 Innovation partnership, policy learning dialogue and awareness raising

The 4th Meeting of the EMMIA Policy Learning Platform in Brussels marks the start of a new quality of dialogue the European Mobile & Mobility Industries Alliance Policy Learning Platform is seeking with committed regions in Europe.

The findings from five model regions discussed, adapted and validated with the help of the member regions and the public led to first preliminary recommendations for regions in the support of their respective eco-system in mobile and mobility services. These recommendations are targeted to three maturity levels / degrees of envisaged commitment regions are likely to put into their efforts: League of Champions, League of Europe and committed regions. These preliminary recommendations demand for a prove and tests in concrete innovation eco-systems of regions. The Platform is therefore seeking for engaged regions, to apply for entering a temporary and closer innovation partnership with members of the Policy Learning Platform. The Platform will evaluate the Expression of Interests (EoI) received and select three most promising regions.

This is the sequence and type of interactions the Policy Learning Platforms plans to have with a successful candidate along its offer within this very region’s EoI:

• First contact and set-up of an EMMIA PLP delegation to contact the regional host institution for a full day study visitarriving in the afternoon and departing next day late in the afternoon. Aim is to see what pre-requisites and infrastructures are available in the region, what could be the goals the region aims for, what are the institutions and initiatives which could be involved in this regional innovation support process to support mobile 
• Local organisation of an one and a half day workshopbringing together regional innovation supporters, units and institutions relevant for coordination of activities in the region in order to organise a systemic support for the mobile and mobility industry in this very region. Delegates of EMMIA PLP arrive late evening of day one and work together on the entire day two. Aim is discussion on preliminary policy recommendations to adapt to concrete cases and extend/streamline road mapping and recommendations. Also bilateral meetings between EC representatives, PLP and public authorities could be part of the programme.
• Optional, if offered by region: Follow up meeting about three to five months later: for a half day joint awareness raisingevent together with political delegation meetings from the regional, EMMIA PLP and possibly EC side. At the end of the day a résumé meeting is held in order to fine-tune ongoing and future activities and look for feedback and adaptation in the recommendation process as well as in the implementation process of the recommendations in the concrete case.

The series of meetings in each region have the objective to bring together relevant experts, business representatives, national and regional authorities and public agencies responsible for the promotion or support of service innovation, business and entrepreneurship or for the administration of Structural Funds in the area of mobile and mobility related industries.

For the European Mobile and Mobility Industries Alliance the temporary innovation partnership helps to adapt the preliminary recommendations to the actual situation in a region as well as improving on the quality and nature of its recommendation portfolio in the three categories envisaged before, Champions League, Euro League and committed regions.

The events will take as their point of departure the recommendations following from the validation of the findings publicised in the EMMIA PLP Guidebook during the 4th Meeting of the Platform in November 2013 in Brussels and from the follow-up surveys available on the EMMIA website.

In this series of workshops a region should therefore focus on the recommendations i.e. that there is a need for a mind-shift towards strengthening the role of service innovation as a lever for modernising industrial policy to fully exploit the transformative power of service innovation in mobile and mobility industries. In particular, the series of meetings as described above should focus on the following:

• How to better capture and exploit the transformative power of service innovation that is changing traditional industrial sectors, generating new service markets with the potential for shaping, exhausting and pushing the capabilities of the new emerging mobile and mobility industry sectors.
  
  The key issue here is not how to support service innovation as such but how to incentivise those service innovations that can be replicated on a large scale and have the potential to foster industrial leadership in Europe. Such transformative service innovations frequently work back from customers’ needs and structural problems, changing concerns offering new service concepts and solutions that draw on technological innovations such as mobile internet and technologies enabling location based services or on new standards. However, this is not about IT services but rather IT-enabled service innovations. As an example mobile services delivered to tourists in rural areas could be cited. Another example is Copernicus supported services in agriculture / forestry. 
• How radical service innovations up and down global value chains are changing the competitive advantage of sectors and regions.
  
  A case in point is the mobility, transport and logistics sector which from moving and storing goods and people has developed expertise in other fields of business and services, identifying opportunities for efficiency gains along the whole value chain, and integrating production, repair and time-saving processes and related services previously undertaken by the client sectors. Cities and regions can play a major role in this as owners of vast mobility infrastructures like roads, harbours, airports, public transport, parking areas etc. This on the other hand allows for relatively modest investments in the support and development of services on top of these on average at least in Europe well-functioning infrastructures. Entire regions may be squeezed out of traditional value chains while others will gain from offering the right mix of location, skills and infrastructure.

• How to mobilise Structural Funds for productivity gains and growth in service sectors through service innovations in the field of mobile and mobility industry. This raises the question of Structural Funds being optimally applied to support services and service innovations, as very often overinvestments in infrastructure set the frame of such investment scenarios.

Overall the EMMIA Policy Learning Platform thinks that a coordination and active management of the running investments and efforts, which support the business eco-system related to mobile and mobility services already allows for an improved visibility as well as an increased efficiency starting from infrastructure investments up to the support of entrepreneurship, start-ups and access to finance for the new ventures in the emerging industry of mobile and mobility. Additional funding on top might surely prove as useful, but should be able to be kept down to modest investments in service innovation support, not in over-costly infrastructures, as indicated in times of economic crisis.

3 Call for expression of interest

This call for expression of interest is launched to identify public partners such as regional ministries or municipal administrations, innovation and development agencies, etc. willing and committed to start such a temporary innovation partnership during March – July 2014. For smaller countries also Expressions of Interests on a national level will be considered. The six core contractors of the EMMIA Policy Learning Platform are excluded from the application process.

The successful regions and the team of the EMMIA Policy Learning Platform will jointly define the programme of each series of meetings/events and also identify the experts and stakeholders to be invited. The programme should be a dynamic mix of expert and policy input, roundtable discussions and business case studies on the transformative power of service innovation in mobile and mobility industries.

The EMMIA Policy Learning Platform will, where appropriate, publicize events, reports, and outcomes on its website. DG Enterprise and Industry as initiator and supporter of the EMMIA Programme will, where appropriate, support and contribute to the local meetings and events.

The host region would be expected to provide the venue for the series of meetings, respectively to provide technical equipment as well as cover the costs of coffee breaks and, where relevant, lunches and dinners. The proposed venue for the first one-and-a-half day workshop should be able to accommodate a maximum of up to 25 people. The second, optional, awareness raising event should provide a venue of about 75 - 100 people.

The host would be allowed to seek sponsorship for the entire programme and other marketing material. The travel and subsistence costs of European Commission officers as well as of EMMIA PLP members and experts will not be expected to be covered by the region.

While there is no prescribed format for presenting the expression of interest, it should contain the following information:

• Proposed themes or issues of specific national or regional interest that could be addressed under the three bullets set out above
• Proposed individuals and organisations to be involved as moderator, speakers, panellists, business case studies, etc., notably from national and regional ministries and administrations, related agencies as well as business organisations and academia
• Proposed target audience for the event
• Proposed media/press strategy
• Possibility for bilateral ad-hoc meetings between the European Commission, ministers, EMMIA Policy Learning Platform members and high-level officials;
• Timing and duration of the three envisaged meetings/events, preferably with several alternatives
• Venue with indication of location, capacity, technical equipment available and catering offered
• Name and contact details of host organisation.

Should you be interested in initiating such an innovation partnership, please respond to this call until 15 February 2014.

For more information, and to submit your expression of interest, please contact Ms. Caroline Labitsch, labitsch@bavAIRia.net, and Mr. Jürgen Vogel, vogel@bavAIRia.net, co-ordination EMMIA Policy Learning Platform.