Version: Final Date: 22 August 2011 Regional Innovation Monitor Regional Innovation Report (Danish Capital Region) To the European Commission Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General Directorate D – Industrial Innovation and Mobility Industries Thomas Ebdrup, Project Manager Stig Nielsen, Analyst Lasse Nielsen, Research Assistant FORA www.technopolis-group.com PREFACE 1 The Regional Innovation Monitor (RIM) is an initiative of the European Commission's Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry, which has the objective to describe and analyse innovation policy trends across EU regions. RIM analysis is based on methodologies developed in the context of the INNO-Policy Trendchart which covers innovation policies at national level as part of the PRO INNO Europe initiative. The overarching objective of this project is to enhance the competitiveness of European regions through increasing the effectiveness of their innovation policies and strategies. The specific objective of the RIM is to enhance the scope and quality of policy assessment by providing policy-makers, other innovation stakeholders with the analytical framework and tools for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of regional policies and regional innovation systems. RIM covers EU-20 Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This means that RIM will not concentrate on Member States where the Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics NUTS 1 and 2 levels are identical with the entire country (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Malta which only has NUTS 3 regions, Slovenia which has a national innovation policy or Cyprus and Luxembourg which are countries without NUTS regions. The main aim of 50 regional reports is to provide a description and analysis of contemporary developments of regional innovation policy, taking into account the specific context of the region as well as general trends. All regional innovation reports are produced in a standardised way using a common methodological and conceptual framework, in order to allow for horizontal analysis, with a view to preparing the Annual EU Regional Innovation Monitor reports. European Commission official responsible for the project is Alberto Licciardello ([email protected]). The present report was prepared by FORA by a team consisting of Thomas Ebdrup ([email protected]), Stig Nielsen ([email protected]) and Lasse Nielsen ([email protected]). The contents and views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the Member States or the European Commission. Copyright of the document belongs to the European Commission. Neither the European Commission, nor any person acting on its behalf, may be held responsible for the use to which information contained in this document may be put, or for any errors which, despite careful preparation and checking, may appear. 1 http://www.rim-europa.eu Table of Contents Executive Summary i 1. Main Trends and Challenges in the Regional Innovation System 1 1.1 Recent trends in regional economic performance 1 1.2 Recent trends in regional innovation performance 2 1.3 Identified challenges 4 2. Innovation Policy Governance 6 2.1 Degree of institutional autonomy 6 2.2 Institutional-set up, co-ordination and implementation mechanisms 7 2.3 Availability and use of policy intelligence tools 9 2.4 Key challenges and opportunities 11 3. Innovation Policy Instruments and Orientations 12 3.1 The regional innovation policy mix 12 3.2 Appraisal of regional innovation policies 15 3.3 Good practice case: Accelerace 16 3.4 Portfolio of innovation support measures 16 4. The Danish Council for Technology and Innovation 18 4.1 Towards smart specialisation policies 18 4.2 Possible future orientations and opportunities 19 Regional Innovation Monitor Appendices Appendix A Bibliography................................................................................................20 Appendix B Stakeholders consulted............................................................................... 21 Appendix C RIM Repository information ......................................................................22 Appendix D Explanation of factors of Innovation Performance, Governance and Policy .........................................................................................................................................23 Appendix E Statistical data.............................................................................................26 Appendix F RIM survey responses................................................................................. 27 Figures Figure 1-1 Economic and innovation performance indicators for the Capital Region....2 Figure 2-1 Governance, policy, and innovation performance factors for the Capital Region ............................................................................................................................. 10 Tables Table 3-1 Existing regional innovation support measures............................................... 14 Regional Innovation Monitor Executive Summary 1. Introduction: Main recent trends in the Regional Innovation System The Copenhagen metropolitan area – the Capital Region – is among the richest regions in Europe and is one of the leading regions with regards to innovation and economic performance. Compared to the euro zone, productivity level was around 103% in 2006. The region also scores well on many framework indicators for innovation. For instance, 40% of the population has a tertiary education (52% above EU27 average); higher education R&D expenditure is 64% above EU27 average; and finally, business R&D expenditure is as high as 4% of regional GDP. However, compared with other similar metropolitan regions for instance Stockholm, Helsinki or Amsterdam, the Capital Region is losing ground on important parameters such as growth in labour productivity and educational level. Most notably, the Capital Region experienced a decreasing growth in labour productivity over the last decade. This has caused the Capital Region to fall behind relatively on growth in GDP per capita to comparable regions like Stockholm and Helsinki. The development can be attributed to a low increase in total factor productivity. This seems to indicate that the innovation capacity of the Capital region is not performing as well as it could. Therefore, the main challenge for the Capital Region is to ensure that the good framework conditions for innovation manifest itself in a better innovation performance in the coming years. 2. Major innovation challenges and policy responses Challenge 1: Getting entrepreneurs to grow to become global companies Successful entrepreneurs are an important part of a dynamic and innovative economy. The Capital Region has many entrepreneurs, but few new firms are growing to become global firms with 250, 500 or 1,000 employees. The development of more high-growth start-ups with a global potential is a main focus area in the regional business development strategy, but the task of building a strong ecosystem for growth entrepreneurs might call for the introduction of new policy measures. One successful policy measure aimed at high growth entrepreneurs is Accelerace. Accelerace is a private internationally-focused business development programme for potential high-growth entrepreneurs and start-ups looking to increase their commercialisation success. The programme is an elite programme for the best Danish companies, and it is considered one of the best policy examples in Copenhagen within entrepreneurship. The introduction of more policy measures that are privately run and elite oriented could probably help meet the challenge for the region. Regional Innovation Monitor i Challenge 2: Improving the knowledge diffusion from universities Knowledge diffusion is important in a knowledge intensive metropolitan area such as Copenhagen. However, the region is not top-performing, and there is a challenge in ensuring that the cooperation and knowledge diffusion between universities and the business sector is improved. The regional policymakers have a strong focus on improving knowledge diffusion in Copenhagen. More than €26m in regional development fund has been channelled into the area of innovation, knowledge sharing and knowledge building (close to 60% of all funds for regional business development). It has yet to be seen if the effort will result in better knowledge diffusion in the coming years, or if the introduction of new policy measures is needed. Such new measures could include a stronger competition between the universities in Copenhagen for obtaining the allocated funds. Challenge 3: Making sure the regions workforce has the competences to competitive on innovation Even though Copenhagen has a reasonably well-educated workforce, the Capital Region is falling behind other metropolitan regions such as Amsterdam, Stockholm and Helsinki. Therefore, the region must have a strong focus on attracting and retaining talent from abroad as well as ensuring that more people get a tertiary education. With the construction of the Oresund Bridge in 2000 to the neighbouring Swedish region of Skåne, there might be a potential in attracting talent and knowledge to Copenhagen from the Oresund region in order to spur innovation and growth in the Capital Region. However, no evaluation exits to determine if the potential in the integration