As we know, one of the economic and financial instruments of the state's innovation policy is the cluster policies and the application of innovation vouchers. So, how can Innovation Vouchers help to develop the business areas in the country?
Namiq Abbasov
You need an entire "innovation ecosystem" to stimulate macro-level innovation. Vouchers could provide an incentive structure for innovators to develop ideas, but without strong presence on research and innovation oriented institutions of higher learning, benign regulatory environment, incubators, industry to buy and consume the innovations, the contribution of vouchers will be negligible.
Need to bring in industry support through trade associations and government agencies tasked to develop these industries.
Usually, industry and scholars don't harmonize. Industry work as they do not need any help from innovators to ease their works in producing something and/or improving businesess. With the innovation vouchers, innovators or scholars can provide their innovations to extend, build, and develop new or advanced industry and business
Vouchers can be considerd as a kind of financial support. In the early stages of new research projects, prototyping, developping strategy supports, business assist, IPR consultancy are just a few examples for which such a voucher can serve. More particularly, scanning of potenti al IPR issues for business can be useful to discover early innovations, and supported by a voucher to encourage industries to overcome the threshold! The value of a voucher is often low, but it can help as an eye opener for micro SMEs to reach further than their plant backdoor. Of course the government innovation policy needs to be open for these kinds of initiatives.
Thanks Mr Subramanian, maybe still one issue that I didn't mention yet is that in Belgium we have, what is called an innovation award (voucher). This is a kind of compensation (award) that an employee receives by his employer, paid by the federal government when he innovates in the company. This innovation should be related to improve the business of the company. This kind of award stimulates employees to think further than the length of their nose! Both parties win and the government participates and invests in economic growth. Still another awarding system is to select the most innovative company and awarding by a financial support. This can be done by sector or even by geographical region!
Governmental grants are an inefficient way to encourage technological development. Bureaucracy creates an environment where those best suited to navigating tortuous, time-consuming requirements are those who benefit. Small organizations and individuals without a sizable support structure, wealth, or extensive experience are largely precluded from the oft lengthy and complex application to selection processes. Liberalization of the regulations and laws preventing or impeding such development requires less cost to the taxpayer and removes the burden from the innovator.
On a small scale level, I'm talking SMEs and microSMEs, innovation vouchers are a very good option for enabling them access to innovation experts. Without them they have serious difficulties in accessing and incorporating all kinds of innovation in their business.
Dear Mr Beebe, an alternative of governmental support is a private investor, like a seed capitalist or a business angel. I would like to hear your experience with those kinds of initiatives. Is it easier, faster, more capital, more risks...etc. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Main goals of innovation voucher are increase demand within research institutes for greater functionality of internal procedures and rules regarding collaboration of researchers and companies. And we can see after five years of implementation of innovation voucher great successful of transfer technology between universities and research Centre and companies. The main reason for this we can say that is very easy administration of proposal of project. Also the innovation vouchers and agenda around this tool is very transparent. The main success factors of innovation vouchers can be summarised as follows: Administration and implementation should be kept as simple as possible, from the application process to the selection of the beneficiaries to the reporting requirements once the voucher has been used. Effective advertising and promotion: considering that the tool aims to overcome an information barrier between SMEs and knowledge institutions, it is important that the tool be advertised widely in the press and through the internet by innovation center. The main public research organisations need to be involved and persuaded to be an active partner of the scheme. Universities could be asked to show their interest to be listed as potential knowledge providers.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Instrumentation Engineering
- Instruments