Regional Innovation Monitor - European Commission... Version: Final Date: 24 August 2011 Regional...

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Version: Final Date: 24 August 2011

Regional Innovation Monitor Regional Innovation Report North-Brabant

To the European Commission Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General Directorate D – Industrial Innovation and Mobility Industries

René Wintjes UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University

PREFACE

The Regional Innovation Monitor (RIM)1 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, and 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 René Wintjes ([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

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Table of Contents Executive Summary i1. Main Trends and Challenges in the Regional Innovation System 1

1.1 Recent trends in regional economic performance 11.2 Recent trends in regional innovation performance 21.3 Identified challenges 3

2. Innovation Policy Governance 62.1 Degree of institutional autonomy 72.2 Institutional-set up, co-ordination and implementation mechanisms 72.3 Availability and use of policy intelligence tools 102.4 Key challenges and opportunities 11

3. Innovation Policy Instruments and Orientations 123.1 The regional innovation policy mix 123.2 Appraisal of regional innovation policies 163.3 Good practice case: Cluster programme of Stimulus 183.4 Portfolio of innovation support measures 203.5 Towards smart specialisation policies 213.6 Possible future orientations and opportunities 24

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Appendices Appendix A Bibliography ............................................................................................... 25Appendix B Stakeholders consulted ...............................................................................27Appendix C RIM Repository information ..................................................................... 28Appendix D Explanation of factors of Innovation Performance, Governance and Policy........................................................................................................................................ 29Appendix E Statistical data ............................................................................................ 32Appendix F RIM survey responses ................................................................................ 33

Figures Figure 1-1 Economic and innovation performance indicators for North Brabant ......... 2Figure 2-1 Province of North Brabant (NUTS-II) is part of South Netherlands (NUTS-I) ....................................................................................................................................... 6Figure 2-2 Peaks of the Delta regions: Southeast or ‘Brainport’ (part of North-Brabant & Limburg) and Southwest (West North-Brabant & Zeeland) ....................................... 8Figure 2-3 Governance-, Policy-, and Innovation Performance Factor scores of North Brabant ............................................................................................................................ 11Figure 3-1 Strengthening the top-innovative companies requires a broader base of innovative firms and a solid ‘foundation’. ...................................................................... 17Figure 3-2 Presentation of areas of specialisation mentioned in ‘Agenda van Brabant’........................................................................................................................................ 22Figure 3-3 Relevant functional regions for the province of North-Brabant ................. 23

Tables Table 3-1 Existing regional innovation support programmes .......................................14Table 3-2Programme monitoring indicators and impact ..............................................19

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Executive Summary

1. Introduction: Main recent trends in the Regional Innovation System Compared to the rest of the Netherlands the economy of Brabant is rather cyclical sensitive due to the historically developed economic structure: manufacturing industry is with 23% of employment relatively large in Brabant as compared to the Netherlands as a whole (18%). However, it is way below the 29% for the EU27 as a whole. The economy of Brabant was indeed hit harder than the rest of the Netherlands by the dotcom crisis and recently the credit-crunch crisis, but it also recovered more speedily. The level and trend for GDP per capita is above the EU average, but similar to the national average. Labour productivity was in both 2000 and 2006 similar to that of the Netherlands as a whole and 26% higher than the EU27 average. The unemployment rate in 2008 was 2.3% in North-Brabant, 2.8 for the Netherlands and 7% for the EU27.

The high innovation performance is dominated by the large number of EPO patents per million inhabitants, which is with almost 700, about 6 times the EU average and more than 3 times the national average. The research lab of Philips in Eindhoven is mainly responsible for this high number of patents, as well as for the high business R&D expenditures. On the other hand, the share of public R&D expenditures in GDP is relatively low in North Brabant: 0.07% for government research expenditures and 0.27% for research expenditures at universities. This is way below both the national and EU public research intensity.

2. Major innovation challenges and policy responses Challenge 1: Strengthening public research

For many years the region celebrated the good performance in business R&D and did not really mind the low public R&D expenditures. Only recently this weakness is emphasised, e.g. in the recent ‘Brainport 2020’ report and programme. It shows that the share of public R&D is the lowest of all the selected innovative regions in a world-wide benchmark-study. The awareness of this challenge has also increased because public R&D is thought to become even more important in the future, e.g. in the light of open-innovation, the adoption of companies of demand-driven innovation strategies, and because it is important in order to attract top-researchers on a global scale. The distribution of public research investments is decided at national level and is difficult to persuade the national government to change this. Also the regional funding opportunities are limited.

Besides the appreciation of cooperation between companies and dedicated public research institutes in innovation projects, the region has recently also experienced another type of beneficial impact from cooperation between the public and private side of the research sector. In 2009 the region has initiated a scheme to remedy the impact of the crisis which threatened many research positions in the region, including researchers at the High-Tech Campus. With a national support measure researchers from the companies in the region were temporarily stationed at TNO or the university. This has proved to have been a good instrument, as most researchers have returned to their old positions.

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Challenge 2: High-tech systems and cross-sector innovation The regional development agency BOM has prioritised the following three areas: high tech systems and materials, food & nutrition, and life sciences & medical technology. This choice was influenced by the selection at national level of priority “key-areas”. As stated by the 2011 strategy report ‘Brainport 2020; Top economy and Smart Society’, High Tech Systems & Materials is the 'mother' of other key technology areas in the region, with internationally operating top technology companies such as Philips (e.g. medical systems), ASML (machines for manufacturing of chips) and FEI Company (electron microscope). The interface of High Tech Systems & Materials and related industries such as industrial design, food, lifetec, and automotive forms the starting point for a wide range of innovations and applications. The High Tech Systems and Materials industry has therefore a significant growth potential, both independently and cross-industry.

Challenge 3: Enhance high level urban services and amenities Due to its diffused urban structure the province North Brabant lacks a large core city with a metropolitan climate. In terms of technology Eindhoven is a ‘hot-spot’, but in terms of knowledge intensive services and cultural amenities it is not. Since manufacturing employment is decreasing for decades it is important to host high quality business services for their growth potential in terms of jobs and income, but also in order to attract companies from elsewhere and to keep the existing internationally oriented firms. Moreover, consumer services and cultural amenities are important assets for attracting high educated people to the region, which is a necessary condition to realise the economic ambitions. The co-operation between the five major cities in the region under the heading of ‘BrabantStad’ is very relevant to address this challenge.

3. Innovation policy governance The NUTS-II level region North-Brabant is one of the 12 Provinces in the Netherlands. The general degree of institutional autonomy of the elected provincial authorities in the Netherlands is low. Concerning innovation governance it is therefore an arbitrary choice to focus within the Netherlands at the NUTS2 level, since there are regional innovation strategies at various levels. In the national programme for regional innovation (‘Peaks in the Delta’) West North-Brabant is part of the functional region Southwest Netherlands, and the rest of Brabant with the Province of Limburg are taken together as Southeast, also labelled as ‘Brainport’. Moreover, regarding the administrative regions, the political discussion in the Netherlands on the most appropriate level continues, ranging from proposals to abolish the provincial governments, to proposals to merge provinces, e.g. the three northern provinces or the Randstad provinces (in the western part of the country). The EU supported Regional Operational Programmes more or less follow the NUTS-I level.

The Province does not have competencies (nor budget) regarding education or science, but it has some influence and responsibilities regarding the design and implementation of regional innovation strategies and programmes. The national level (Ministries and AgencyNL) is the most important level of governance in terms of the design and implementation of subsidy measures for innovation activities. There is a trend of decentralisation, but it is mostly the local level of Municipalities that has grown in importance concerning policy implementation.

The main role of the North-Brabant provincial government is in co-ordinator and co-funding of strategic initiatives developed by stakeholders in the region. There are several regional innovation programmes and many regional initiatives and projects. Somehow the regional government is always involved, either direct or represented by the Regional Development Agency BOM, but the involvement of the Province rather

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serves to connect and coordinate among the many initiatives than leading or initiating them in a top-down mode of governance. Other intra- and inter-regional partnerships that are part of the ‘multi-level-governance’ situation are for instance:

• ‘BrabantStad’; the co-operation network of 5 main cities in North-Brabant: Breda, Eindhoven, Helmond, ’s-Hertogenbosch and Tilburg, and the Provincial government of North-Brabant;

• The Co-operation Region Eindhoven (SRE) is a formal co-operation of 21 municipalities in Southeast North-Brabant, also known as the Eindhoven Regional Government. This is an additional level of governance between the Province and Municipality level;

• Cross-border alliances with Flanders in Belgium, and Nordrhein-Westfalen, in particular with public research institutes in Leuven and Aachen.

The innovation system of North-Brabant is private-driven. Again this is related to the limited role of public government and public R&D investments.

The recent decision of the National Ministry of Economic Affairs to stop funding regional development support (which includes ending the Peaks in the Delta programmes end its involvement in the regional development agencies such as the BOM in North-Brabant) result in major challenges for the region and to the concerning agency BOM, but with the strong bottom-up dynamics of the triple helix partnerships and the existing intermediate organisations, North-Brabant is in a better position than any other province in the Netherlands.

4. Conclusions: future actions and opportunities for innovation policy There are good prospects for the province North-Brabant to maintain, or even improve its position among the top innovative regions in Europe.

In this report three main challenges have been identified which are to be addressed by policymakers: Strengthening the public research sector; provision of high-level urban services and amenities; and the best opportunities for Smart Specialisation are in the field of ‘High-tech systems’ which is applicable in several sectors in the region such as Lifetec, food and automotive.

An important future orientation of innovation policy is towards international cross-regional cooperation. For the Eindhoven region the cooperation with the Dutch province of Limburg, the Aachen region in Germany and the region of Leuven in Flanders has gradually gained momentum, and this orientation will continue. Especially linking up with the public research infrastructure in the Aachen and Leuven area is interesting for North-Brabant. In this respect, for North-Brabant European integration seems to be a good solution to the lack of autonomy and limited public R&D in the region.

With the new regional innovation and competitiveness programme ‘Brainport 2020’ , issued in 2011, the ambitious future orientations of especially the east part of the province are set out. The 2010 ‘Dynamic Brabant’ programme and the vision ‘Agenda of North-Brabant’ address the province as a whole. For the western part of the Province the PiD programme needs a follow-up, since these nationally funded programmes for regional innovation has stopped.

One of the main uncertainties for the future are the other impacts of the budget reductions at national level, but most of the implications will have become clear in 2011. Early 2011 the national ministry announced that it would no longer contribute to the funding of regional development agencies such as the BOM in North-Brabant, but recently it appeared that there will still be funding opportunities, but in the framework of programmatic policy support addressing the nationally defined key-areas.

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1. Main Trends and Challenges in the Regional Innovation System

This section first presents in a synthetic way, key information on the state and trends in performance of North-Brabant as an economy (paragraph 1.1) and as a regional innovation system (paragraph 1.2). The aim of this section is to identify the main challenges for the region (paragraph 1.3).

1.1 Recent trends in regional economic performance

With a Gross Regional Domestic Product of €80 billion the Province of North-Brabant is responsible for 15% of Dutch GDP. GDP per inhabitant of the region is on the Dutch average, which is above EU27 average, but below leading regions in Europe. When differences in ‘purchasing power’ are taken into consideration, GDP per capita and growth in GDP per capita is similar to EU27 as a whole. Within the province, intra-regional differences in GDP/inhabitant are small. Annual growth rate of regional GDP was with 4.0% in the period 2000-2008 a little bit below Dutch average (4.5%). The annual growth rates for the region differ more over the years than the national growth rates, which show that compared to the rest of the Netherlands the economy of Brabant is rather cyclical sensitive. The economy of Brabant was indeed hit harder than the rest of the Netherlands by dotcom and recent credit-crunch crisis, but recovered more speedily as well.

The unemployment rate in 2008 was 2.3 in North Brabant, 2.8 for the Netherlands and 7% for the EU27. These differences in the unemployment rate have been rather stable: between 2000 and 2008 the regional rate was on average 0.5 percentage-point below the national and 5.5 percentage-point below the EU27 unemployment rate.

Labour productivity in terms of GDP per economically active population was in both 2000 and 2006 similar to that of the Netherlands as a whole (€63,000 in 2006), and 26% higher than the EU27 average (€50,000 in 2006).

The more cyclical trend is due to the historically developed economic structure, since manufacturing industry (including the building sector) is with 23% of employment relatively large in Brabant as compared to the Netherlands as a whole (18%). (However, it is way below the 29% for the EU27 as a whole). The share of the business services sector in employment is with 14%, slightly below the National share of 16%. Other market-services including trading and wholesale represent 24% of employment for both the region and the country, which is similar to the 25% for the EU as a whole. Mainly the public administration and services sector in North-Brabant is with 30% of employment relatively small compared to the 34% for the Netherlands as a whole. The shift in the sector structure after 2000 has been similar for the region and the country, e.g. regarding ‘de-industrialisation’ and the growth of the ‘public sector’.

Leading business sectors that have been identified as part of the national 'Peaks in the Delta’ initiative to support regional strengths are (between brackets the % of employment): Process Industry (10.2%), High tech Systems (1.7%), Medical Systems and Life Sciences (3.4%), Maintenance (0.2%), Logistics and Distribution (4.1%), Food & Nutrition (0.7%) and Tourism (0.4%).

Reducing the sensitivity to cyclical economic trends is also a challenge at the level of many individual companies in the region, e.g.: ASML (machines for making chips), and DAF Trucks (truck manufacturer). For Philips this challenge has for instance influenced their strategic choice to increase activities in Medical Systems, a market which is less cyclical sensitive.

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Figure 1-1 Economic and innovation performance indicators for North-Brabant

Source: Eurostat.

The location of North-Brabant next to the metropolitan Randstad regions (in the west of the country), the importance of manufacturing industries and the diffused urbanisation pattern of the province provide some explanations for the economic development of the last decade and are key factors influencing current and future trends. North-Brabant benefits from spill overs from the Randstad region (Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht) which faces several dis-advantages of agglomeration (e.g. traffic jams). The multiple-core urbanisation pattern, with cities such as Eindhoven, Tilburg, Den Bosch and Breda, can be seen as a barrier to the development of one of these cities into an international centre for high level services.

1.2 Recent trends in regional innovation performance

Typical for North-Brabant is the very high innovation performance in terms of the number of EPO patents per million inhabitants, which is with almost 700, about 6 times the EU average (see also figure 1.1) and more than 3 times the national average. The research lab of Philips in Eindhoven is mainly responsible for this high number of patents, as well as for the high business R&D expenditures. As share of GDP, business R&D expenditures are at 2.53 % in 2007 which is more than double the 0.97 % share for the Netherlands as a whole, and the 1.2 % for the EU27. In 2000 the business R&D intensity in North-Brabant was the same as in 2007 (which was also true for the EU27), while for the Netherlands as a whole it has decreased from 1.07 to 0.97% of GDP. In the Randstad, (the west of the Netherlands), which historically is seen as the core of the Dutch economy, the business R&D intensity has decreased, e.g. in the Province of North Holland (including Amsterdam) the business R&D intensity has decreased from 1.0 % of GDP in 2000 to 0.68 % in 2007. The high scores for North-Brabant on patents and business R&D result in a high level of ‘technological innovation’ (see also Figure 2.3).

On the other hand, the share of public R&D expenditures in GDP is relatively low in North-Brabant: 0.07 % for government research expenditures and 0.27 % for research expenditures at universities. This is way below both the national and EU public research intensity. For the Netherlands as a whole, government research expenditures were at 0.22 % of GDP and in the west of the country this is even 0.30 %. Higher education research expenditures at national level are at 0.52 % of GDP. The low public research intensity of North-Brabant is also evident in Figure 2.3 in the below EU


average score on the factor ‘Public knowledge’. One of the reasons for the relatively low public research intensity of North-Brabant compared to the Randstad regions in the west of the country is the fact that the two universities in Brabant are relatively young and small compared to those in the West of the Netherlands. The national government research labs are also historically concentrated in the west of the Netherlands and this public R&D distribution pattern did not change after 2000.

In North-Brabant 29% of the population is high-educated, which is similar to the share at the National level (30%), but clearly below the high levels of the provinces in the west of the country, e.g.: Utrecht (39%) and North Holland (35%). It is, on the other hand, above the share for EU27 as a whole (25%).

The share of households with broadband access in 2009 was 76%, which is similar to the 77% for the whole country. In 2006 broadband access rate was below the national rate, so North-Brabant has been catching up in this respect.

The share of the population involved in Lifelong-learning in North-Brabant is with 16% in 2008 (and 13% in 2000) similar to the national share of 17% in 2008 (14% in 2000), which is almost twice as high as for EU27.

The share of employment in medium-high and high-tech manufacturing is with 5.2% in 2006 higher than for the country average of 3.1, and also higher than in the EU as a whole. However, in 2000 these shares where respectively 7.1 for North-Brabant and 4.5 for the Country, so the ‘high-tech’ characteristic in terms of manufacturing employment has been decreasing. In this respect it is a major challenge for the region to translate high-tech knowledge from Business R&D and patents into jobs in manufacturing companies. The share of knowledge intensive services has increased between 2000 and 2006.

Regional data from the Community Innovation Survey are not available at Eurostat, but National Bureau of Statistics (CBS 2010) show that 25.9 % of the firms in the province is innovative (compared to 24.6% at national level). This indication of the innovativeness of firms is in line with indications from other sources, e.g. a relatively large share of the national innovation subsidies (e.g. from the WBSO tax-credit fascility) from AgencyNL finds its way to the province.

Within the province North-Brabant, for the NUTSIII region South-East (the Eindhoven region) the share of innovative firms is even 30.2% (CBS 2010). While only 4.8% of all employees in the Netherlands are working in the Einhoven region, this region is responsible of 27% of all R&D expenditures in the Netherlands and 21% of all innovation expenditures.

Regional data on exports are not available at Eurostat, but a study from EIM showed that compared to the country as a whole a relatively large share of 16 % of the firms in North-Brabant are engaged in export (EIM, 2006). Only the firms in the province of Limburg are more export oriented. This again confirms that the province not only relies on just a few large firms which are strong in R&D and patenting, but that it also has a innovative, dynamic and internationally oriented SME sector. For the Netherlands as a whole the percentage is 13.

1.3 Identified challenges

Based on the economic trends and the characteristics of the innovation system of North-Brabant we can identify some strengths and relative weaknesses, which can be translated into challenges for the future.

Challenge 1: Strengthening public research

A major weakness for North-Brabant, or rather an in-balance of the innovation system of North-Brabant, is the relatively low public R&D expenditures. For many years the region has merely celebrated the good performance in business R&D. It is only


recently that the relatively low expenditures from public funded research institutes is emphasised in strategy documents as a relative weakness, e.g. in the recent Brainport 2020 report (2011). This report shows that the share of public R&D is the lowest of all the selected innovative regions in a world-wide benchmark-study. The awareness of this challenge has also increased because public R&D is thought to become even more important in the future, e.g. in the light of open-innovation, the adoption of companies of demand-driven innovation strategies, and finally because it is important in order to attract top-researchers on a global scale.

For the policy makers of the region this challenge is difficult to address, because the distribution of public research investments is decided at national level and sub-national funding opportunities are limited. The region has, however, managed to persuade the move of (the public funded) TNO Industry to Eindhoven several years ago. More recently the Dutch Ministry together with TNO has invested in the creation of the Holst Centre, in co-operation with IMEC (public funded research lab located in Leuven, Belgium). This shows that with limited autonomy, a proactive approach towards multi-level governance can work.

Besides the appreciation of cooperation between companies and dedicated public research institutes in innovation projects, the region has recently also experienced another type of beneficial impact from cooperation between the public and private side of the research sector. In 2009 the region has initiated a scheme to remedy the impact of the crisis which threatened many research positions in the region, including researchers at the High-Tech Campus. With a national support measure researchers from the companies in the region were temporarily stationed at TNO or the university. This has proved to have been a good instrument, as most researchers have returned to their old positions.

Challenge 2: High-tech systems and cross-sector innovation North-Brabant has a rather broad and diversified technological and sectoral base with many potential fields of specialisation, including some cross-sector fields of innovation. In terms of the traditional statistical sector codes, Electronics and optical instruments and Machinery are over-represented compared to the national economic structure. Past priority setting has lead to focus areas such as mechatronics, ICT, automotive, food, health, and maintenance. For west North-Brabant also the chemical is a prioritised strength.

The regional development agency BOM had prioritised the following three area’s: high tech systems and materials, food & nutrition, and life sciences & medical technology. In setting and labelling the priorities the selected national key area’s (sleutelgebieden) has influenced the choice and names of the priority areas at regional level. Also the choice of Philips to prioritise ‘health’ and ‘medical’ has had an influence on the process of defining the potential fields for Smart Specialisation in the region. One of the ambitions of the 2011 strategy report ‘Brainport 2020; Top economy and Smart Society’ is to be recognised as Europe’s first Smart Specialisation Strategy. In terms of sector challenges it states that “High Tech Systems & Materials is the 'mother' of other key technology areas in Brainport”2. The High Tech Systems & Materials industries are strongly represented in Brainport, with internationally operating top technology companies such as Philips, ASML and FEI Company. Examples of high tech systems

2 Brainport is a functional region which comprises of the administrative regions (provinces) of North Brabant (excluding the NutsIII region of west North Brabant) and Limburg as it is defined by the national programme ‘Peaks in the Delta’ to support innovation policy. The NutsIII ‘Eindhoven region’ is at the core of Brainport. For decades two functional regions were regarded to be the core economic regions of the country, they were labelled Mainports (referring to harbour related activity in Rotterdam, and airport related activity in Amsterdam). Several years ago, in the national spatial planning policy, the Eindhoven region and the south east of the Netherlands were labelled ‘Brainport’.


are the ASML Twinscan 1950i, the fastest machine ever for the manufacturing of chips. FEI electron microscope makes atomic-scale chemistry visible which opens the door to new inventions. Also medical systems developed by Philips are good examples of ‘high tech systems’ as the ‘mother’ of other key technological areas in the region. As emphasised in ‘Brainport 2020’: “The interface of High Tech Systems & Materials and related industries such as industrial design, food, lifetec, and automotive forms the starting point for a wide range of innovations and applications. The High Tech Systems and Materials industry has therefore a significant growth potential, both independently and cross-industry”. Applications of High Tech Systems & Materials include robotics, electromechanical materials and control systems, motion controllers with mechanical actuators, linear motors, motor management, remote monitoring and diagnosis, guided transport systems and embedded systems. In this context, think of markets such as semiconductor, precision and nanotech systems, micro- and nano-assembly systems, logistic systems, office and production automation and systems for handling, packaging, printing and processing goods.

Challenge 3: Enhance high level urban services and amenities Due to its diffused urban structure the province North-Brabant lacks a large core city with a metropolitan climate. In terms of technology Eindhoven is a ‘hot-spot’ but in terms of knowledge intensive services and cultural amenities it is not. Since manufacturing employment has been decreasing for decades it is important to host high quality business services for their growth potential in terms of jobs and income, but also in order to attract companies from elsewhere and to keep existing internationally oriented firms. Moreover, consumer services and cultural amenities are important assets for attracting high educated people to the region, which is an necessary condition to realise the ambitions.


2. Innovation Policy Governance

This section provides an analytical overview of the complex institutional framework for designing and implementing regional innovation policy in North-Brabant. First the issue of autonomy of the Province as regional authority is discussed regarding the design and implementation of regional innovation policies (paragraph 2.1). In paragraph 2.2 the complex multi-level governance situation is analysed and explained: who designs the policies and how are they implemented? A third paragraph addresses the development and use of policy intelligence (2.3). This section concludes with key challenges and opportunities concerning policy governance.

Figure 2-1 Province of North-Brabant (NUTS-II) is part of South Netherlands (NUTS-I)

Before turning to the provincial level of governance it is relevant to explain that it is to some extent an arbitrary choice to focus within the Netherlands at the NUTS2 level, since there are regional innovation strategies at various levels. One could claim that the provincial level is not the most important or appropriate with regard to regional innovation policy. In the national programme for regional innovation (‘Peaks in the Delta’) West North-Brabant is therefore part of the functional region South-west Netherlands, and the rest of Brabant with the Province of Limburg are taken together as South-east, also labelled as ‘Brainport’. Moreover, regarding the administrative regions, there is a political discussion in the Netherlands on what would be the most appropriate level. Some have proposed to abolish the provincial governments, others have proposed to merge provinces, e.g. to merge the three northern provinces. Concerning the Randstad there are proposals to merge the provinces in the western part of the country. The EU supported Regional Operational Programmes more or less follow these NUTSI level regions.

The NUTSII level region North-Brabant is one of the 12 Provinces in the Netherlands. This administrative region is bordered by Belgium in the south, the Dutch Province of Limburg in the east, the Province of Zeeland in the west, and the Province of Utrecht in the north (see figure 2.1).


2.1 Degree of institutional autonomy

The general degree of institutional autonomy of the elected provincial authorities in the Netherlands is low. The Province has limited competencies and budget capacity compared to the national government and the Municipalities. For most policy fields the national government is the single policy-making level and the Provincial level is only for a limited number of policy fields the administrative regional level for implementation. There is a trend of decentralisation, but it is mostly the level of Municipalities that has grown in importance. The limited responsibilities of the Province can perhaps best be indicated by looking at the budget of North-Brabant. About two third of the provincial budget (€1b in 2011) comes from the National government and the main source of own income is the motor vehicle-tax. Main issues on the budget are Transport & Infrastructure (39%), and Culture/youngsters/society (32%). In 2011 the budget for Socio-economic affairs is €74m which is 7,4 % of the budget. Part of this is for economic policy development, including innovation policy.

The regional authority includes an elected council (once every 4 years), and has very limited legislative powers and minor tax raising powers. The Province does not have competencies (nor budget) regarding education or science, but has some influence and responsibilities regarding the design and implementation of regional innovation strategies. The national level (Ministries and AgencyNL) is the most important level of governance in terms of the design and implementation of subsidy measures for innovation activities.

2.2 Institutional-set up, co-ordination and implementation mechanisms

The main role of the Province (the North-Brabant provincial government) is in co-ordinator and co-funding of strategic initiatives developed by stakeholders in the region. There are several regional innovation programmes and many regional initiatives and projects. Somehow the regional government is always involved, either direct or represented by the Regional Development Agency BOM, but the involvement of the Province rather serves to connect and coordinate among the many initiatives than leading or initiating them in a top-down mode of governance. According to the Provincial government innovation is primarily a task for companies, in close cooperation with knowledge institutions. The Province mainly wants to serve as “inspirator, stimulator, and coordinator”.

For many years the national government did not really interact with the provincial government regarding innovation policy. Already in the late 1980’s the national viewpoint was adopted that regions should develop their own strength, without support from the national government. The remaining national involvement concerned (besides the national subsidies and research and innovation programmes): the Syntens network with its regional offices, co-ownership/stakeholder in the regional development agency BOM, and co-funding the EU Structural Fund regional programmes. This had changed in 2004 with the national programme ‘Peaks in the Delta’. One of the major influences of this programme was the formulation of functional regions which were invited to develop ‘place-based’ regional innovation strategies. In the case of North-Brabant this resulted in a split of the province (see figure 2.2) and in emphasising the importance of South-east as Brainport for the whole country. Although, more recently in 2011, the national government had announced that both the ‘Peaks in the Delta’ programme and the national involvement in the regional development agencies will be stopped, the ‘Peaks in the Delta’ has had a large influence on innovation policy in North-Brabant.


Figure 2-2 Peaks of the Delta regions: Southeast or ‘Brainport’ (part of North-Brabant & Limburg) and Southwest (West North-Brabant & Zeeland)

The ‘Peaks in the Delta’ (PiD)programme claimed to follow a bottom-up approach, which was true in the sense that the national Ministry invited the regions to develop plans themselves. The idea generation was de-centralised, but there was also some input from the side of the national government, e.g. concerning the nationally selected priority sectors (key areas or ‘sleutel-gebieden’).

Most of the regional innovation strategies or programmes, such as the “Pieken in South-east-Netherlands”, are developed quite informal by programme committees which include ‘triple-helix’ parties. The programme committee of the PiD-South, for instance, includes besides representatives of the involved governments at various levels, also three companies and three institutes of higher education.

The programmes not always include only newly developed instruments or projects, since some project-designs are continued or funded by several programmes, e.g., the ‘clusterprojects’ format returns in several programmmes (OP-South, PiD, and Dynamisch Brabant). Monitoring is mostly done by one or more of the involved intermediary organisations and evaluations are mostly done by external consultants.

The regional innovation strategy programmes ‘OP-South’ and ‘Brainport 2020’ are also produced by triple-helix programme committees. The provincial documents ‘Actionprogramme Innovation North-Brabant’ , ‘Dynamic Brabant’ and ‘Agenda van Brabant’ are produced by the provincial government, but in consultation with regional stakeholders.

The published regional strategies and programmes are presented quite informally. They are not laws or legally binding documents, but ‘pacts’ signed by public-private, ‘triple-helix’ partnerships involving a broad range of actors. Since the regional government has limited budget and autonomy, bottom-up initiatives from the grassroots level are very important in the region, and the collaborative initiatives are numerous. Among the many organisations of the well developed intermediate landscape, Brainport Development gives a good example of how innovation policy strategies in the region are governed and developed.


Brainport Development is a new style development agency. It is a horizontal Triple Helix collaboration, since large companies and SMEs, knowledge institutes and governments at various and multiple levels collaborate. The project management approach builds on the model of the former Horizon Programme which consisted of a large number of bottom-up initiatives with external project owners. Brainport still tries to persuade one of the involved firms or knowledge institutes to take ownership of an initiative or project. Brainport Eindhoven has won the Eurocities Award 2010 in the ‘cooperation’ category, for cooperation among companies, knowledge institutions and government in the Brainport region.

The most recently published regional innovation strategy involving North-Brabant is ‘Brainport 2020; Top economy and Smart Society’. Development of this vision and strategy along with a tangible implementation programme was asked for by the Cabinet of the national government. The assignment reads: “Develop, parallel with the airport and seaport visions, a cohesive and comprehensive vision of Brainport. At the level of Southeast Netherlands with Brainport its pivot and with a focus on cross-border links to Flanders and Nordrhein-Westfalen.” An indication of how such strategies are developed can be found on page 234 which gives a detailed description on the whole process of developing the vision and subsequently the implementation plan. Among the activities during spring and summer of 2010 were: 4 expertgroup meetings with 45 experts; 10 breakfast sessions with 200 participants from different sectors also including SME’s, Venture Capitalists, and education institutes; and 50 bilateral meetings with stakeholders in the region.

Both the vertical co-ordination between governments of various levels and the co-operation with other regions concerning innovation policy is currently well developed in North-Brabant. Before the Peaks in the Delta (PiD) programme, the interaction with the national level was rather limited, but as the example of ‘Brainport 2020’ shows there is real interaction and cooperation between policymakers of the various levels. It is one of the implications of having limited autonomy that the region is used to operate in a multiple-level governance situation, trying to benefit from various kinds of coalitions. As mentioned before, this ‘multi-level-governance’ situation has become increasingly important, especially with the Peaks in the Delta programme. Below the main (intra- and inter-) regional partnerships are mentioned. The first two listed examples of alliances are co-operations between municipalities within North-Brabant, followed by co-operations with other regions within the Netherlands (see also figure 2.2) and finally an international cross-border alliance:

• ‘BrabantStad’ is the cooperation network of 5 main cities in North-Brabant: Breda, Eindhoven, Helmond, ’s-Hertogenbosch and Tilburg, and the Provincial government of Noord-Brabant. Given the diffused, multiple-core urban structure of the region this cooperation is very important to increase the attractiveness of the region, and the provision of high level amenities and services.

• The Co-operation Region Eindhoven (SRE) is a formal co-operation of 21 municipalities in Southeast North-Brabant, also known as the Eindhoven Regional Government. This is an additional level of governance between the province and municipality level.

• The PiD Southeast region; this is the cross-regional alliance between the middle, northeast and southeast North-Brabant with the Dutch Province of Limburg;

• The PiD Southwest; this is the cooperation between West North-Brabant and the Province of Zeeland;

• The NUTS1 region South Netherlands; this involves the cooperation between the three southern provinces: Limburg, North-Brabant and Zeeland, e.g. in relation to the ERDF Regional Operational Programme: ‘OP-Zuid’.

• Cross-border alliance with Flanders in Belgium, and Nordrhein-Westfalen, in particular with Leuven and Aachen.


The innovation system of North-Brabant is private-driven. Again this is related to the limited role of public government and public R&D investments. The ‘Brainport 2020’ can again serve to evidence this characteristic of the region, e.g.: the development of this strategy and programme was lead by Jan Zuidam, former vice president of the multinational company DSM and the steering group also included a former manager of Philips. In line with the approach of the agency to appoint external people as ‘project-owners’, many initiatives and projects are lead, or ‘driven’ by businessmen on a personal basis. Private companies like Philips have become important actors regarding governance of RTD-policy in North-Brabant. The involvement of Philips has increased over the last years with the adoption of the concept of “Open Innovation” and most notably by the High-Tech Campus which has been build around Philips’ R&D home-base in Eindhoven. It is to a large extent a private-policy, but with large impact on the innovation performance in the region and therefore Innovation Policy Intermediates like NV REDE (which recently merged with Horizon into Brainport Development) became involved in further development of the Campus by providing incubation support. The campus model of Open Innovation is adopted and implemented elsewhere in the region. Of the triple helix parties: government, companies and knowledge institutes, the regional authority (the provincial government) is perhaps the least dominant, least powerful, and most limited in terms of resources.

The characteristic of ‘private-driven’ is also evident in the decentralised mode of policy delivery, since a rather large network of not necessarily public service providers are involved in innovation policy implementation. To give some examples we mention:

• Province (regional government);

• North-Brabant Development Agency (BOM);

• Education institutes (universities, Fontys, ROC’s, Design Academy, etc.);

• Chambers of Commerce;

• BrabantStad;

• Brainport Development

• Syntens;

• Stimulus (management EU programmes);

• North-Brabant employers organisation (BZW);

• Department for North-Brabant of the Dutch organisation of SMEs (MKB Nederland).

When all the public research and innovation support available in the region are considered, the importance of the EU Structural Funds both in terms of funding and strategy development is low (as is also indicated in figure 2-3), but when only the budget of the province for innovation policy is considered, and all national funding is disregarded, the EU Operational Programme South (‘OP-Zuid’) is quite important.

2.3 Availability and use of policy intelligence tools

Evaluations are frequently used for policy learning in the Netherlands and this is also true for North-Brabant. The most serious evaluations are done externally, and often include quantifiable results and impact assessments. Internal evaluations often consist of reporting monitoring data, describing the number of participants and the supported


activities, complemented with some case-study examples. In general, evaluations are public.

The major regional strategies or programmes involving the regional level are always preceded by studies collecting information showing the need for policy, the opportunities of certain sectors, and contextual challenges and global trends. Desk research combined with interviews is the preferred approach for such forward looking studies.

Figure 2-3 Governance, policy, and innovation performance factors for of North-Brabant

Source: RIM survey.

2.4 Key challenges and opportunities

Concerning governance there are a few challenges and many opportunities for North-Brabant. Increasing regional autonomy would be a challenge, but not really a feasible opportunity.

In an evaluation of the provincial innovation policy (IOO BV, 2007) companies responding to a survey mentioned that they would appreciate a more active, visible role for the provincial government. This is probably not a call for more top-down Provincial government intervention, but an appraisal of the regional over the national level of government. The provincial government has proven to be flexible, sustainable and coherent in fulfilling its role in the governance of the multiple, functional innovation systems in which the region is involved and the sub-systems within its administrative borders. The multi-level governance situation must not lead to a lack of leadership, but this is not the case. Moreover, a less modest role of the provincial government could lead to competing or conflicting leadership.

One of the main challenges is to persuade the national government to invest more in North-Brabant and in this respect ‘Brainport 2020’ seems to be a major opportunity. However, the national government does not plan to increase overall public R&D expenditures, and changing the existing regional distribution will be difficult.


The recent decision of the National Ministry of Economic Affairs to stop funding regional development support (which includes the Peaks in the Delta programmes end its involvement in the regional development agencies such as the BOM in North-Brabant) result in major challenges for the region and to the concerning agency BOM, but with the strong bottom-up dynamics of the triple helix partnerships and the existing intermediate organisations, North-Brabant is in a better position than any other province in the Netherlands.

3. Innovation Policy Instruments and Orientations

As has already become apparent in the former sections, the main problem for this report, but also the main characteristic in terms of innovation policy is related to the definition of ‘the region’, and ‘regional policy’ because there are more definitions effective. Applying only the most strict possible definition of ‘the region’ as the whole of the Province North-Brabant, excluding any other regional entity as territorial unit and limiting ‘regional policy’ only to those policies where only the ‘provincial government of North-Brabant’ is involved, would implicate that that this section of the report would not only be empty, but also misleading, since there is always more than one policy level involved somehow.

3.1 The regional innovation policy mix

The innovation policies and support available in North-Brabant is a mix of measures designed at national and regional levels. At the sub-national level in the Netherlands there is no formal science or public R&D policy, nor budget, and no generic policy instruments to increase private R&D. To a large extend the national government provides the R&D policy tools and at the regional level these tools are implemented and complemented with regional innovation strategies. The policy mix of measures that is effective in North-Brabant is different from the mix in other regions in the Netherlands, because of its strength in business R&D and high-tech industries, and its relative under-represented public R&D expenditures. E.g. the EU ERDF Operational Programmes for East, North and West Netherlands includes less business oriented R&D support measures because there the ‘absorption capacity’ for such measures in terms of the possible applicants is lower. The risk of too little applicants means a risk of receiving less EU-funding than originally budgeted. Outside the South there is therefore less support for Business R&D and innovation projects than in the OP-South Netherlands. In the former section we have also seen that the strength of the private side of the innovation system of North-Brabant has implications in terms of the governance of the policy mix. Within the regional portfolio of policy instruments the priority is on the creation and growth of innovative enterprises (see also table 3.1). Support for policy making, governance & horizontal research and innovation policies has a rather low priority. According to the respondent ‘Support for research efforts’ is given a low priority in North-Brabant, which is different from most other regions since in 42 % of the RIM-survey respondents have rated this a very high priority, probably also because it will mostly be explained as public research policy. ‘Market and innovation culture’ is not really a priority in North-Brabant, which is similar to the other regions. As in most regions, ‘Support human capital development’ is more important.

Also the answers to the 2010 RIM survey regarding the involvement of the region in ‘hot RTDI policy Topics’ shows how the regional innovation policy mix of North-Brabant can be characterised. Most policy topics are covered at the national policy level, especially the public oriented policies such as the ‘Public procurement policies’, ‘Policies for public sector innovation’, and the ‘Innovation related tax policies’. Also most of the ‘demand-side policies’ are subsidy schemes implemented by the national agency ‘Agency NL’ (former SenterNovem). Most clear regional involvement is in the following RTDI Policy Topics:


• Cluster policies;

• Policies promoting new forms of public-private-partnerships for science-industry co-operation;

• Policies for open innovation;

• Support for the internationalisation of innovation policy.

Compared to the averaged answers for the other EU regions some differences appear. The involvement of the region in ‘Policies for open innovation’ is clearly higher than average for the EU regions (see Appendix I). Regarding ‘open innovation’ a major influence has been the early adoption and implementation of this concept by Philips. One of the policy instruments in this respect is the support to campus-development, e.g. in the form of incubation services.

Concerning ‘Eco-innovation policies’ and ‘Theme-based policies aimed at broader societal goals’ the region North-Brabant is not a front-runner, but several regional initiatives on these hot innovation topics were planned at the time of the survey in 2010.

Under-developed in the regional policy mix of North-Brabant are the policy topics: ‘Policies for innovation in services’ and ‘Policies for public sector innovation’. But maybe this should not come as a surprise, since the strength of the regional innovation system of North-Brabant as a typical High-tech region, is not in the service sector, nor in the public sector.

The most important innovation policy instrument in North-Brabant is the national measure for tax-deduction of R&D expenditures (the WBSO scheme). Next to the national innovation support schemes (mostly implemented by AgencyNL), there are several sub-national Programmes which constitute the main regional input to the innovation policy mix which is effective in North-Brabant (See table 3.2). In terms of budget for North-Brabant ‘OP-ZUID’ (Operational Programme South Netherlands, co-funded by ERDF) is the largest current programme concerning innovation, since about half of the €232m budget for priority 1 concerns North-Brabant. But this programme is running to the end of its funding period, and recently the programme ‘Brainport 2020’ draws most attention. The indicative budget is €2b a year. With such a budget it would by far become the largest programme for North-Brabant. ‘Dynamic Brabant’ is the NUTS2 level, provincial programme for innovation and competitiveness. It has a budget of €64m, but the activities go beyond research and innovation and there is some overlap with the other programmes, also in terms of (co-)funding). Within the national Peaks in the Delta policy for regional innovation two programmes are relevant for North-Brabant: ‘Peaks in the Delta Southeast Netherlands’ which includes middle and southeast North-Brabant and ‘Peaks in the Delta Southwest’ which includes west North-Brabant.


Table 3-1 Existing regional innovation support programmes

Title Duration Policy priorities Budget Organisation responsible

More information

Dynamisch Brabant

2008-2011 -HR and entrepreneurial talent

-Investment climate;

-innovation in SME’s

€64 million Province of North-Brabant

http://www.brabant.nl/politiek-en-bestuur/bestuursakkoord/programmalijnen/dynamisch-brabant/dynamisch-brabant-algemeen.aspx/~/related/96b43a006bfa4d11b12edd1c0c8ccaf7

At www.brabant.nl an English summary of ‘The Brabant Agenda’ is available which includes info on ‘Dynamic Brabant’.

Peaks in the Delta Southeast

2006-2010 Innovative clustering in:

-high-tech systems and materials;

-Life sciences & medical technology

€30 million

(including €9 million provided by national government)

Ministry of Economic Affairs, Programme-secretariat Southeast-Netherlands

http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/pieken-in-de-delta

Evaluation done by Berenschot (2010): “Pieken in de Delta, Evaluatie subsidieregeling”

Peaks in the Delta Southwest

2006-2010 Innovative clustering in Logistics and Maintenance

€9 million Ministry of Economic Affairs, Programme-secretariat Southwest-Netherlands

http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/pieken-in-de-delta

Evaluation done by Berenschot (2010): “Pieken in de Delta, Evaluatie subsidieregeling”

Operational Programme South (‘OP-Zuid’)

2007-2013 Priority 1 themes €(9.3m Euro budget each):

1.1-R&TD activities in research centres

1.3-Technology transfer

1.4-Assistance to R&TD, particularly in

EU –funded (ERDF)

For priority 1 total budget = €232 million

(province and local communities co-funded 21 million;

Programme management by Stimulus (part of Province North-Brabant) on behalf of the three Provinces in South Netherlands (Zeeland, North-Brabant, Limburg).

This programme is oriented at the NUTS1 level region: ‘South Netherlands’, which includes the NUTS2 level regions North-Brabant, Zeeland, Limburg. For more information see:

http://www.op-zuid.nl/

OP South Annual Report 2008

http://www.op-zuid.nl/images/stories/Programmadocumenten/jaarverslag-op-zuid-2008.pdf


SMEs

1.5-Advanced support services for firms and groups of firms

private co-funding €70 million; €93 million; and National government €49 million Euro)

OP South Annual Report 2009

http://www.op-zuid.nl/images/stories/Programmadocumenten/jaarverslag_op-zuid_2009_aangepast.pdf

‘Brainport 2020’

2011-2025 (urgency programme2011-2015)

70 projects on RTDI and competitiveness, several sectoral and thematic prriorities

€2b per year (including 500 from National government)

Brainport Development

http://www.brainport.nl/nl

4 page summary in English available;

Full report of 246 pages in Dutch


Within each of the above regional programmes there are many initiatives, projects, and measures. Since there are many different criteria to measure the importance of an individual scheme it is rather arbitrary to assess the importance of individual measures, but below we list what can be seen as the top-three most important regional innovation policy measures in North-Brabant, and in what respect they are important:

1. ‘OP-south MKB subsidies’. These SME subsidies for innovation are in the EU Operational Programme South Netherlands, which is managed by Stimulus. The subsidy schemes are important in terms of budget, because it is one of the rare regional subsidy schemes, and because it is targeting and exploiting the core regional strength of innovation in firms. See also paragraph 3.3 where these subsidy schemes (and especially the cluster-scheme) are described as good practice.

2. Brainport development projects, e.g. the support to Campus development and triple-helix, public-private collaborative initiatives. Besides novelty and past successes, these initiatives and incubation support are important because they enhance the regional embeddedness of private innovation activities and improve the linkages between the public and private actors in the innovation system of North-Brabant.

3. ToekomstBedrijven (translated: ‘FutureEnterprise), a project initiated in the ‘Dynamic Brabant’ programme and implemented by Syntens. It is aimed at SME’s which have not received innovation support before (see Peutz et.al., 2009). This project is an important instrument in broadening the policy mix in terms of target-groups. It is a quite successful instrument to increase the number and share of innovating SMEs (broadening the base of the innovation pyramid). While most policy measures support firms which are already innovative (lifting the top of the innovation pyramid). This measure is therefore also important in terms of novelty.

3.2 Appraisal of regional innovation policies

In the Netherlands the Province North-Brabant has a good track-record regarding regional R&D subsidies. Among these good instruments for demand driven innovation subsidies, especially the cluster measure of Stimulus is a good practice innovation support instrument (see paragraph 3.3). This instrument is now included in the several SME innovation subsidies available in ‘OP-South’. Although this instrument has a long history as a cluster-programme, it is according to some definitions not a regular ‘cluster-programme’, e.g. it is not a permanent collaboration, it is a subsidy for a micro-cluster of several firms (and often from several sectors) that co-operate during the development of a new product. But after the project other partnerships may be formed, for other products. It is difficult to de-couple the success of this policy instrument from the strong characteristics of the region in terms of business R&D, product development and networking. It is a case of co-evolvement and synergies, since the causalities run both ways: the features of the instruments fit with the characteristics of the context and vice versa. This assessment or appraisal is also supported by the fact that in other parts of the country the same policy measure is less successful, mainly because in the other Dutch regions it is more difficult to get the same number of applicants for such micro-cluster of collaborating SMEs. At the same time the impact of these micro-cluster projects adds on to the existing strength of the region in cross-sector collaborations which form the basis for opportunities regarding Open Innovation and Smart Specialisation Strategies.

The current national government has announced drastic changes regarding innovation support and most notably regional innovation policy. The national programme for regional innovation: the Peaks in the Delta programme will stop. It was announced at the end of 2010 by the cabinet that also the national contribution to the basic funding of the regional development agencies (in the case of North-Brabant: the BOM) would stop, but the interviewed stakeholders explained that after the recent discussions in


2011 it seems that funding from the national government could still continue somehow in the form of contract or programme financing. According to Erik van Oorschot, of the North-Brabant development agency, this could for instance apply for future support to the recently defined national ‘Top-sectors’.

The evaluation of the regional innovation policy of the Province of North-Brabant (IOO BV, 2007) showed that there could be a role for the Provincial innovation policy in complementing (and specifically broadening) the support of the Peaks in the Delta (PiD) Programmes. This national support for regional PiD programmes is focussed at the rather narrow top of innovative companies. From the national point of view, supporting the winners is the most efficient investment (which explains why the PiD Programme for Southwest Netherlands has a larger budget than the PiD programme for Southwest). The provincial government wanted a more coherent development plan which also includes addressing the societal challenges. However, at that time, a coherent vision was lacking. With Dynamisch Brabant (Provincie Noord-Brabant, 2010) and the Agenda Noord-Brabant (2010) there is a long term and coherent vision. Within the Dynamisch Brabant Programme the idea for ToekomstBedrijven started, as it referred to 1000 innovation scans at SMEs. In contrast with the national PiD programme approach of strengthening the ‘peaks’, or the ‘top’, a project like ToekomstBedrijven supports innovation in firms below the existing top of innovative high-tech firms. In this respect ToekomstBedrijven is a good programme to extent policy mix beyond the top of the innovative companies. Also an action programme in West North-Brabant addresses more than the top-innovative firms since it specifically addresses the coordination between high-tech and low-tech (INDEX Technocentrum (2005).

The year 2011 will be a transition to the new programmes. ‘Brainport 2020’ is in a way the follow-up of the PiD Southeast, especially where it stresses the importance of “investing with a high return” but it is a broader programme than the PiD, since also in ‘Brainport 2020’ the idea to extend the base of innovative SMEs, is included: “To push that top even higher requires an even broader base and more solid foundation” (See also figure 3-1).

Figure 3-1 Strengthening the top-innovative companies requires a broader base of innovative firms and a solid ‘foundation’.

Source: “Brainport 2020”. Note: ‘translation: higher top, broadening and strengthening the base’.


The role of the Province is in coordinating innovation policy initiatives, but the evaluation in 2007 showed that this role is not very visible to the beneficiaries, neither for the role of the EU support programme. The national programmes such as the WBSO and the national agency ‘agentschapNL’ are most visible. The practise of multi-level governance comes with shared roles and more distributed responsibilities and less visibility for the individual levels of government. In the case of North-Brabant the situation has become more complex because the Peaks in the Delta programmes have split the Province in two parts: one part falls under the PiD Southwest and the other the Southeast. It seems better to use functional regions rather than administrative regions, but for several issues North-Brabant is one functional region. Appreciation of policies at the level of functional regions implies an appreciation of the practice of multi-level governance, where policymakers identify what would be the most relevant level of governance, and what the borders of the concerning functional region is. More concrete for North-Brabant, it seems relevant to differentiate innovation policy for west and east of the province, but this should be subject of evaluation, because it can change.

Brainport 2020 is one of the first strategies which explicitly include the objective to strengthen the public R&D activities. Examples in the past are the location of institutes such as the Holst Centre and the Institute for Molecular Medicine on the High Tech Campus Eindhoven, and the move from Delft to Eindhoven of parts of TNO which has strengthened the public involvement in the R&D infrastructure of North-Brabant. More public R&D is needed, as is mentioned in the challenges identified in paragraph 1.3 “Identified challenges”. But, with the low autonomy and regional budget, it is very difficult to change the historically grown distribution pattern of (national) government funded research. Using more of the ERDF support for more supply oriented policy strengthening public R&D could also be a good option. But to some extent the success of the private R&D has blinded (‘locked-in’) the region for policy options regarding public R&D.

Another policy that is relevant in relation to one of the identified challenges is ‘BrabantStad’. In BrabandStad the 5 major cities (Breda, Eindhoven, s’-Hertogenbosch, Helmond and Tilburg) in the region cooperate to improve international competitiveness as a sustainable, growing urban network. Because of the diffused urban structure with several, interlinked core cities, it is important to cooperate concerning the international attractiveness and high-level services and amenities for knowledge workers. In this respect Eindhoven is in many ways too small on its own.

An important strength in terms of governance are the many bottom-up initiatives with co-operating triple helix partners. In a way this strength is a side-effect of not having much autonomy. A good example of the beneficial impact of this kind of networking is the anti-crisis reaction in the province. Successful policy measures have been taken to tackle some difficulties caused by the crisis.

3.3 Good practice case: Cluster programme of Stimulus

The enormous absorption capacity for subsidies for the R&D cluster projects from Stimulus (Structural Fund programme management on behalf of the Province of North-Brabant) shows how strong the private R&D and innovation networks are compared to other regions in the Netherlands. An evaluation of this successful cluster programme of Stimulus shows (Oerlemans and Rutten, 2006) that the region has a strong capacity to absorb and co-fund EU Structural Funds policies to stimulate R&D investments. Other provinces in the Netherlands (and Peaks in the Delta Programmes) have copied the programme design, but the number of project applications is limited compared to North-Brabant. In this cluster programme a consortium (micro-cluster) of a few companies (and or knowledge institute) can apply for a subsidy for a cooperative projects to develop a new product. An enormous amount of such proposals and successful projects shows the potential in North-Brabant to induce additional private R&D investments. On the other hand, the capacity for generating


spin-off companies from Public research institutes is or at least was relatively small in the Province of North-Brabant (Ministry of Economic Affairs). These characteristics of the innovation system in North-Brabant have strong implications for the innovation policy portfolio and its governance.

The programme exist for many years, but in the current EU Operational Programme South Netherlands for the period 2007-2013, the ‘cluster programme’ is integrated in a batch with three other SME funding schemes to support innovation and the subsidy is now called ‘Innovation Project’ and it is also possible to apply as individual company. Besides individual applicants, grants can also be requested by associations of at least two independent companies, or associations of one or more companies and one or more research organizations.

Table 3-2Programme monitoring indicators and impact

Indicator Cumulative until 31-12-

2009 Total

Committed 354 Number of R&D projects

Target 350 Committed 100,950,861

Private R&D investment (€) Target 100,000,000 Committed 24,741,668

Public R&D investment (€) Target 20,000,000 Committed 2,279 Supported start-up companies and small

companies <5 years Target 250 Committed 3,352

Number of supported SMEs Target 1,200 Committed 468 Number of partnerships between businesses

and knowledge-/research institutes Target 275 Committed 4,245

Number of gross jobs created (in FTE) Target 510

Source: OP-South Annual report 2009; Note: results are for the 3 Provinces of Zeeland, Noord-Brabant and Limburg

The grant is a percentage of project costs to be determined per participant, up to an amount of € 1,000,000 per project. The grant is more than 45% of the eligible costs. Monitoring data of the programme (Table 3.2) is available in the OP-South Annual report 2009 which can be found on the OP-Zuid website3. Many of the targets of the whole programme have already been reached at the end of 2009. E.g.: by the end of 2009, already 468 partnerships between businesses and knowledge-/research institutes have been formed, and over 3,000 SME’s had participated in the projects. The average size (budget) of projects subsidised (in 2008 and 2009) was about €200,000.

In terms of policy the design features of the programme are not very innovative anymore, but the programme runs successfully for many years, is well known and well evaluated.

3 See: http://www.op-zuid.nl/images/stories/Programmadocumenten/jaarverslag_op-zuid_2009_aangepast.pdf


3.4 Portfolio of innovation support measures

The full portfolio of public policies on regional innovation available in the province of North-Brabant consists of more than only those measures and initiatives designed by the provincial authorities and more than those implemented by the BOM as the ‘provincial agency’. Out of the full portfolio of support measures for research and innovation the national policies are dominant, especially regarding research (e.g. the WBSO corporate tax-benefit) and especially regarding public research. (e.g. national regulations on mobility of researchers). The second most important support level is the EU Structural Funds and other EU funding instruments (e.g. the 7th Framework Programme).

Public R&D investments and related policies, are under-represented in the mix of effective policy instruments in North-Brabant, since the provincial government of the region does not have a budget or constitutional powers/competencies which could correct this in-balance of the R&D policy mix. The national approach with the Peaks in the Delta programmes has only slightly improved this situation and this national scheme for regional innovation policy has stopped. As a sort of follow-up on the PiD Southeast the recent ‘Brainport 2020’ programme also mentions the need to improve the public-private R&D balance. The PiD programmes have also improved the coherence between the national and regional level strategies and programmes. It is to be seen if the enhanced thinking about the possible synergies between the national and regional level policies will continue without the PiD programme. Maybe only in the east of the province, since the Ministry of Economic affairs only asked for a strategy regarding the ‘Brainport’ region, which does not include West North-Brabant.

Overall, the recognition and labelling (and marketing) of the region in the national spatial planning policy as “the Brainport of the Netherlands” has had a major impact. The statement of the national government that the regions R&D potential is of national importance has lead to increased attention from the national government in The Hague to what is happening in the Province and especially the Eindhoven region. In national policy circles it was important to contradict the ‘locked-in’ situation regarding the traditional notion that the port of Rotterdam and Schiphol airport served as the engines of the national economy. With the term ‘Brainport’ the national importance of the research and innovation potential of the Eindhoven region and wider Southeast of the Netherlands was acknowledged. In the Peaks in the Delta Programme the regional level of R&D and innovation policy (including the policy funded by the EU) has been linked more closely to the new national strategy to support strong and promising RTDI developments with an inter-related set of programmes targeting specific technological themes, regions, and specific target groups (e.g. start-ups). Regarding start-ups and start-up policy (linking the national and regional policies) the situation had indeed improved in the region (Wintjes, 2007).

With the Peaks in the Delta Programmes the coordination between the national and ‘sub-national’ levels was changed. In a way it had become a less ‘bottom-up’ mode of governance compared to the former period, because over the last two decades the national policy makers were hardly involved in the development and implementation of EU funded initiatives at the regional level. With ‘Peaks in the Delta’ the National government has (in the light of the formulation of the National Reform Programmes, and the National Strategic Framework document), interacted more with the regions. As a result several (National) Innovation Programmes such as Point-one4 have been implemented that have a core based in the Eindhoven region. This programme funding approach (instead of structural, basic funding for institutes) has resulted in an increase of support for public R&D and Science –Industry linkages. Examples are the location of institutes such as the Holst Centre (which plays a major role in the Point-

4 See: http://www.point-one.nl/Innovatieprogramma/Innovatieprogramma


One Programme) and the Institute for Molecular Medicine on the High Tech Campus Eindhoven. Also the move from Delft to Eindhoven, several years ago, of parts of TNO has strengthened the public involvement in the R&D infrastructure of North-Brabant. However, in March 2011 the national government has announced that the budget this year of the Innovation Programme Point-One will be decreased considerably from €56m to €23m. Point-One is focussing on three technological domains: nano-electronics, mechatronics, and embedded systems. Since most competences in these domains are concentrated in the Eindhoven, it is an important element in the regional specific innovation policy of North-Brabant.

The national government still provides the R&D policy tools and the programme frameworks. At the regional level these tools are implemented and complemented with regional innovation strategies formulated at multiple territorial levels by strong Triple-Helix governance structures. At the national policy level the territorial and thematic points of focus have been formulated more top-down then before, which has improved the structural coherence of the policy mix design. But, at the multi-layered regional level it is the dynamics of the Triple Helix mode of governance that result in effective and efficient management and implementation of this design, based on systemic linkages between stakeholders in the rather tight regional networks of North-Brabant.

3.5 Towards smart specialisation policies

There have been many debates in North-Brabant regarding issues of what is now labelled ‘Smart Specialisation Strategies’. However, in the past it was not literally a discussion, but more like presenting a study or organising a conference. Moreover the focus was on promising sectors, e.g. mechatronics, automotive or the ‘manufacturing industry’ as a whole. This regional debate was strongly influenced by the Peaks in the Delta reports and programmes where the national ‘key-area’s’ and the National Innovation Programmes where put on the regional agenda in a top-down mode of governance. As a result the term ‘high-tech systems’ (one of the national key-area’) became dominant in the regional discussion, although many others were mentioned as well. More recently, real debates and discussions have been organised in the region discussing the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities in a more distributed, in-depth way, e.g. the workshops organised as part of the development of ‘the Agenda North-Brabant’ (2010), or the breakfast sessions organised in the framework of ‘Brainport 2020’ (2011). “Tradition and technology” is one of the subtitles of the report ‘Agenda van Brabant’ and this vision links indeed the traditionally developed characteristics with the opportunities of new technologies and capabilities, for instance regarding Design. A historical map shows the old clusters or concentration of traditional sectors such as food, textiles, metal products, and shoe-manufacturing. It shows that the current industrial structure of the regional economy is much more diversified, but also that some of the emerging fields of specialisation are linked to past strengths. The vision ‘Agenda of Brabant’ (2010) and the programme document ‘Dynamic Brabant’ (2010) both largely follow the fields of Smart Specialisation as identified in the Peak in the Delta programmes. Therefore, there are many origins of the policies addressing the identified fields of smart specialisation. The mentioned fields of smart specialisation are often combinations of cross-sector developments. For the western part of the province the main fields are: ‘Maintenance and logistics’ and ‘process-industries’. For the middle and eastern part of the province ‘high-tech systems & materials’ and ‘Lifetec’ are identified. The strength in ‘High-tech systems’ is similar to the areas of the Point-one Programme: Nano-electronics, mechatronics, and embedded systems. One of the ambitions of ‘Brainport 2020’ is to be recognised as Europe’s first Smart Specialisation Strategy. In terms of sector challenges it states that “High Tech Systems & Materials is the 'mother' of other key technology areas in Brainport”. The High Tech Systems & Materials industries are strongly represented in


Brainport, with internationally operating technology companies such as Philips, ASML and FEI Company.

In terms of content, important elements in the Smart Specialisation policies are the support to campus development. After the example of the High-tech Campus Eindhoven, other initiatives mentioned in ‘Agenda van Brabant’ are: High Tech Automotive Campus, the Supply Chain Campus (SCC) on logistics, and Maintenance Campus (see also Figure 3-2). The fields of priorities or cluster strengths are often sectoral combinations which also combine different fields of technologies. Such cross-sector innovations have been supported by for instance the cluster programme of Stimulus, where they learned about their mutual strengths and the academic expertise available locally, which facilitated teaming up in new project consortia. Older concepts such as ‘mechatronics’ and ‘embedded systems’ already emphasised the importance in the region of cross-sector and cross-technology linkages. It also emphasises the general purpose nature of the technologies involved, such as ICT, nanotech and new materials regarding the Smart Specialisation in ‘High-tech Systems’, and bio-tech, ICT, and optics regarding the Smart Specialisation field of ‘Lifetec’.

Over the years, priority setting has also been an important activity of ad-hoc working groups, steering groups, and programme platforms that develop regional innovation strategies. Evaluating and assessing strengths and weaknesses of the region in terms of sectors or technology are often addressed in programme documents and sometime in specific studies e.g. financed by the BOM or Brainport Development.

Identifying the need for complementary investments, for instance matching regional education & training with the labour market on certain emerging fields of specialisation, is done at grass-roots level and addressed in triple helix kind of co-operations. Many of such policy issues are implemented by (former Horizon projects and now) Brainport projects.

Figure 3-2 Presentation of areas of specialisation mentioned in ‘Agenda van Brabant’

Source: Agenda van Brabant (2010)

The coordination and implementation of the Smart Specialisation Strategies are not with one single organisation. Although the national Ministry has asked Brainport Development to develop the strategy, it does not imply that Brainport will be the only implementing and coordinating organisation. For instance the Province and the BOM


will also play a major role in this strategy. Since the BOM is serving the whole of the province of North-Brabant it will for instance also address topics like logistics and maintenance (which are more specifically relevant for the West of the province), while Brainport Development (which originally serves, and is funded by the Eindhoven SRE-region) is more active in strengthening and coordinating at the level of Southeast Netherlands and across borders with the international ELAT region (see Figure 3-3).

A recent experience in North-Brabant showed the importance of public R&D, especially in times of crisis. Supporting the temporary stationing of researchers from private companies at public research organisations in the region has proved to be successful, since most of them returned after a relatively short period. It showed the possible synergies of co-evolving public and private R&D activities and therefore the need to improve this imbalance of the regional innovation system by increasing public R&D expenditure. Also the loss of the pharmaceutical research under US ownership in Oss, was an important lesson, since the plans to embed the private R&D unit in the region by investing in a Pharma-campus, came too late.

Figure 3-3 Relevant functional regions for the province of North-Brabant

Source: Agenda van Brabant (2010)

A good governance characteristic of the region regarding the multi-level innovation policy is that the organisations at the various levels of governance are not competing with each other, but promote interaction and integration of each others’ policies and strategies. A next step in implementing the Smart Specialisation Strategy as formulated for instance in ‘Brainport 2020’ is to get a clear commitment from the national government. For the western part of North-Brabant it is important that a follow-up of the PiD Southwest will be developed. Sustainability and stability in terms of priority setting and defining Smart Specialisation Strategies is not the strongest point of the dynamic policy situation in North-Brabant. The region acknowledges the importance of focussing, setting priorities and identifying smart specialisations, but it


is also important to maintain the strategies for some time. Too much dynamism and flexibility in terms of strategy and policy making can reduce the effectiveness.

3.6 Possible future orientations and opportunities

We can conclude that there are good prospects for the province North-Brabant to maintain, or even improve its position among the top innovative regions in Europe. A major characteristic of the region is that it has more than one single regional strategy or programme. There are several strategies, programmes and several governments and agencies at different levels are involved.

In this report three main challenges have been identified which are to be addressed by policymakers. Strengthening the public research sector is important for the region for many reasons. The imbalance caused by the high level of Business R&D expenditures should be restored, but it is difficult for the provincial (as well as sub-regional and local) governments to fund public research due to limited autonomy. The opportunities of the region to shift existing national public R&D expenditures in the Netherlands towards North-Brabant are limited. This brings us to the second major challenge for North-Brabant, namely the distributed urban structure with multiple cores. Because the region does not have a single core city, the main cities have to cooperate in order to provide high-level urban services and amenities, in order to attract top talent, foreign capital and to keep national and regional ‘champions’. In terms of Smart Specialisation the best opportunities are in the field of ‘High-tech systems’ which is applicable in several sectors such as Lifetec, food and automotive.

An important future orientation of innovation policy is towards international cross-regional cooperation. For the Eindhoven region the cooperation with the Dutch province of Limburg, the Aachen region in Germany and the region of Leuven in Flanders has gradually gained momentum, and this orientation will continue. Especially linking up with the public research infrastructure in the Aachen, Luik and Leuven area is interesting for North-Brabant. In this respect, for North-Brabant European integration seems to be a good solution to the lack of autonomy and limited public R&D in the region.

With the new regional innovation and competitiveness programme ‘Brainport 2020’ , issued in 2011, the ambitious future orientations of especially the east part of the province are set out. The 2010 ‘Dynamic Brabant’ programme and the vision ‘Agenda of North-Brabant’ address the province as a whole. For the western part of the Province the PiD programme needs a follow-up, since these nationally funded programmes for regional innovation has stopped. The main uncertainty for the future are the other impacts of the budget reductions at national level, but most of the implications will have become clear in 2011. Early 2011 the national ministry announced that it would no longer contribute to the funding of regional development agencies such as the BOM in North-Brabant, but recently it appeared that there will still be funding opportunities, but in the framework of programmatic policy support for the nationally defined key-area’s.


Appendix A Bibliography

Berenschot (2010) “Pieken in de Delta; Evaluatie subsidieregeling”.

Brainport Development (2011), “Summary Brainport 2020”. Available at: www.brainport.nl

Brainport Development (2011), “Brainport 2020; top economy and smart society” (full report in dutch; Available at: www.brainport.nl).

Bureau Buiten, in opdracht van Provincie Limburg, Noord-Brabant en Zeeland (2007) “Operationeel Programma voor Zuid-Nederland; Europees Fonds voor Regionale Ontwikkeling 2007-2013”. Available at: www.stimulus.nl

Bureau Louter (2008) “Pieken in beeld; Nulmeting Pieken in de Delta Monitor”. Available at: www.minez.nl

Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, Mathilda Copinga & Wilco de Jong (2010) “Regionale innovatie in Nederland; Community Innovation Survey 2004 en 2006”. CBS, Den Haag/ Heerlen.

EIM (2006), “MKB regional bekeken; een regionale beschrijving van het MKB in Nederland”. EIM, Zoetermeer.

Instituut voor Onderzoek van Overheidsuitgaven, IOO BV (2007), “Evaluatie innovatiebeleid Provincie Noord-Brabant”. IOO BV, Leiden.

INDEX Technocentrum (2005) “Actieprogramma ‘Afstemming Low Tech - High Tech West-Brabant’”. INDEX, Breda.

Ministry of Economic Affairs (2005) Onderscheidend Vermogen. Sleutelgebieden-aanpak: samen werken aan innovatie op kansrijke gebieden, The Hague, April 2005 (In English: Distinguishing capacity: The approach of key areas: working together on innovation in high-potential areas). Downloadable at www.minez.nl

Ministry of Economic Affairs (2007), “Nationaal Strategisch Referentiekader Structuurfondsen 2007 –2013”. The Hague, EZ.Ministry of Economic Affairs, Pieken in de Delta Programmacommissie Zuidoost-Nederland (2010) “Pieken in Zuidoost-Nederland; Uitzicht op de top”. Available at: www.minez.nl

Oerlemans, Leon & Roel Rutten (2006) “In de Ban van de Clustering; Een evaluatieonderzoek naar de Stimulus Clusterregeling”, Universiteit Tilburg.

Peutz, M., R. Stultiëns, I. van Berlo (2009) “Large-scale involvement of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises not participating in Innovation Networks”. Paper in proceedings of the 2nd ISPIM Innovation Symposium, 6-9 December 2009. New York City, USA.

Provincie Noord-Brabant (2004), “Actieprogramma Innovatie Noord-Brabant; Innovatieve topregio Brabant: Creating, connecting and enabling winners”.

Provincie Noord-Brabant (2005), “Connecting, Creating and Enabling Winners; Action Programme for Innovation in North-Brabant”.

Provincie Noord-Brabant, Gedeputeerde Staten 30 augustus (2007,), “Programmaplan 'Vertrouwen in Brabant', Uitwerking Bestuursakkoord 2007-2011”.

Provincie Noord-Brabant (2010), “Agenda van Brabant; traditie en technologie”. Available at: www.brabant.nl

Provincie Noord-Brabant, Kernteam Dynamisch Brabant (2010), “Dynamisch Brabant 2010; Publieksversie”. Available at: www.brabant.nl/politiek-en-bestuur


Stimulus Programma management, on behalf of the Province of North-Brabant (2010), “Jaarverslag 2009 OP-Zuid, Europees Economisch Stimuleringsprogramma”. Available at: http://www.stimulus.nl/

Wintjes, R.J.M. (2006), “Strategic Evaluation on Innovation and the knowledge based economy in relation to the Structural and Cohesion Funds, for the programming period 2007-2013; Country Report The Netherlands”. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/evaluation/pdf/evalstrat_innov/netherlands.pdf

Wintjes R. (2007), Monitoring and analysis of policies and public financing instruments conducive to higher levels of R&D investments; The “POLICY MIX” Project. Regional case study of North-Brabant (NL). Available at: http://www.merit.unu.edu/staff/wintjes/PolicyMix_case_NoordBrabant.pdf

Zuidwest-Nederland Programme Committee (2006), “Profiteren van een strategische ligging tussen twee wereldhavens; het Pieken in de Delta Programma voor Zuidwest-Nederland”.


Appendix B Stakeholders consulted

Linco Nieuwenhuyzen, Strategy Advisor at Brainport Development (25 March 2011).

Sjef van Herpt, Innovation Advisor Syntens, North-Brabant region, Eindhoven office (1 April 2011).

Erik van Oorschot, Head of ‘Development & Innovation’, Noord Brabant development agency BOM (1 April 2011).

Michel Weeda, Programme manager, Noord Brabant development agency BOM (1 April 2011).


Appendix C RIM Repository information

Baseline regional profile

NEDERLAND ZUID-NEDERLAND Region North BrabantNUTS Code NL41

Regional Profile

Introduction

The Province of Noord-Brabant is the second largest provinces of the Netherlands (5,082 km 2, which is 12.2 % of total Dutch area). It is in thesouth of The Netherlands. The number of inhabitants is 2,444,435 (30-11-2009, CBS Stat line) (14.8% of total in the Netherlands).

Repository

Support mesures

Operational Programme South Netherlands 2007-2013 (OP Zuid)Peaks in the Delta: SoutheastPeaks in the Delta: Southwest

Policy documents

Brainport2020Ten issues for Brabant: Coalition agreement 2011-2015Peaks in the Delta in Southwest Netherlands: Benefiting from a strategic location; Programme document 2008 Programme Document PiD South-eastBrabant AgendaBrainport Agenda

Organisations

Stimulus Programme ManagementSamenwerkingsverband regio EindhovenBrainport DevelopmentProvince North-BrabantBrabant Development Company

Economy

With a Gross Regional Domestic Product of €72 bln it is responsible for 14.3% of Dutch GDP. Annual growth rate of regional GDP was with4.0% in the period 2000-2008 a little bit below Dutch average (4.5%). The economy of Brabant is rather cyclical sensitive. The economy was hitharder than the rest of the Netherlands by dotcom and recent credit-crunch crisis, but recovered more speedily as well. GDP per inhabitant of theregion is on the Dutch average, which is above EU25 average, but below leading regions in Europe. Intraregional differences in GDP/inhabitantare small.

Industry, building sector and agricultural sectors (5.5 mln pigs) are relatively large in Brabant as compared to the rest of Holland (SociaalEconomische Verkenningen 2007, SER Brabant). The services sector is less well developed (apart from logistics and distribution). Leadingsectors that have been identified as part of the national 'Peaks in the Delta initiative to support regional strengths are (between brackets the % ofemployment): Process Industry (10.2%), High tech Systems (1.7%), Medical Systems and Life Sciences (3.4%), Maintenance (0.2%), Logisticsand Distribution (4.1%), Food&Nutrition (0.7%) and Tourism (0.4%).

The South-east of Brabant around the major city of Eindhoven (214.036 inhabitants (2010)), which has been denominated 'Brainport', ischaracterised by a strong position of high tech companies including Philips, the worlds leading wafer stepper manufacturer ASML (machines formaking chips), a large conglomerate of machine industry (VDL group), a medium sized chips manufacturer (NXP), a leading truck manufacturer(DAF Trucks) and many others.

Research, Development & Innovation

Overall the province has with 2.81 % of GDP one of the highest R&D intensities of all provinces in The Netherlands (national average 1.83%).The Brainport region is by far the most research intensive with an intensity of 8%. R&D efforts are driven by the R&D expenditures of the privatesector: 2.62% for the whole province, 7% in Brainport. Public contributions are low compared to the Dutch average, and even lower if compared

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to private expenditure.

There is one technical university (TU/e in Eindhoven), and one more social sciences oriented university UvT (Tilburg University). The TU/e has7215 students (MSc and BSc), 117 full-professors and in total 3047 staff members [1]. In 2008 3453 scientific publications were produced. TheTU/e is ranked first of 350 universities in the CWTS ranking regard to scientific output in cooperation with industry.

Tilburg University has 11,900 students, 233 full professors, and in total 1600 staff members, producing 1940 scientific publications. TilburgUniversity has a top-10 European position in the Shanghai Social Sciences ranking. Important public research institutes are TNOIndustry&Technology (located in Eindhoven and Helmond), Holst Centre (a public-private research institute on electronics) and a number ofresearch institutes with strong relations to the university (e.g. Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI), Center for Translational Molecular Medicine(CTMM)).

Most important private research location is the High-tech campus in Eindhoven. This is a pubic-private initiative around the premises of PhilipsResearch. Nowadays there are approximately 70 high tech companies with research activities there. This campus (with the presence of PhilipsResearch) is also responsible for the high patent output of the region: on average 1971 EPO filings in the period 2000-2008 (1290 in ICT), 56% ofall EPO filings in the Netherlands in this period.

[1] TU/e, Facts and figures edition 2009

Governance

RTDI governance in the Netherlands is multi-level, the national level being most important. Here the largest budgets are spent and most decisionson (semi-) public research institutes are made. Within national RTDI policy there is a regional component that since 2006 is focused on turningexisting regional strengths into economic 'peaks' of worldwide recognition (Peaks in the Delta, PiD, M€216 for 2006-2010). Regionalgovernments add to the national budget, so that relatively large funds become available for regional RTDI programmes. Brabant is (together withthe province of Limburg and the Brainport region) part of the PiD region 'Southeast', while West Brabant is participating in PiD region'Southwest'.

Provinces receive funding from national authorities (and EC funds) but generate no direct tax-income. The main role of provinces is organizationof spatial development (in economic domain e.g. development of industrial estates). Provinces have no formal role in industrial, research, or highereducation policy. However, they are a player in the Dutch consensus oriented consultative culture and provinces see their limited role asinstrumental for broader regional goals.

Activities of the Province with a finance component (investment promotion, innovation support, financial participation and restructuring ofindustrial estates) are outsourced to the BOM (Brabant Development Company). Turnover of the BOM in 2009 was €2.8 mln, with a loss of €1.7mln; balance sheet total was €48.8 mln).

Generic innovation support to SMEs is, as elsewhere in the Netherlands, given by Syntens, which in Brabant is located in Eindhoven and Breda.

At regional level the cities and municipalities around Eindhoven in southeast Brabant cooperate in the SRE (Cooperation relationship EindhovenRegion) in order to improve their operation at supramunicipal level. The region is called 'Brainport'. Brainport Development is the regionalgovernment agency stimulating regional economic activities.

Policy

Brabant has always been one of the most innovative regions in The Netherlands. This was to a large extent caused by the presence of Philips, thelarge (micro)electronics manufacturer, who started out as a producer of lamps. Philips had and has it's central research centre in Eindhoven.

The present policies in Brabant are still to a large extent influenced by Philips: Philips decided some 10 yeras ago to reduce the fundamentalresearch and focus on ite's core competences. In order to obtain additional knowledge they proposed to open up their research campus and create a'open innovation' high-tech campus for many other companies. The campus is now one of the innovation and reaesrch hot-spots in TheNetherlands with many comapnies having at least some research there.

The campus is a centrepiece in the national and regional policy aiming at strengthening existing strengths.In Southeast Brabant these strengthsHigh tech systems & materials, Food & nutrition and Life sciences & medical technology. For 2010 the budget to support this in the PiDprogramme is €9 mln.

In Southwest Brabant the PiD themes are process industry (maintenance and bio-energy), logistics and tourism. For 2010 budget is €2.5 mln.

Policies at all levels related to the province are focused on these areas. The Agenda for Brabant is focusing on these (with e.g. attention forinnovation in the area of energy (biomass (as part of the domain process industry) and solar PV (as part of high-tech systems and materials). TheBOM is focusing it's attention on these sectors (e.g. World Class Maintenance: this national initiative that was co-initiated by the BOM links thecapital intensive industries - aviation, energy, infrastructure, maritime and process - to the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) field. TheWorld Class Maintenance Programme leads to an excellent performance in the terms of quality, availability, and trust against minimal lifecyclecosts).

In order to maintain the high R&D expenditure in future regional policy is very much focused on increasing public R&D in the region by

acquiring national research institutes.

Finally creative industries are considered important: Eindhoven has a prestigioud design academy, and Philips is also more and more using designas a distinguisihng feature.

Support measure

NEDERLAND ZUID-NEDERLAND Region Noord-BrabantNUTS Code NL41

Support Measure

Title of measure

Operational Programme South Netherlands 2007-2013 (OP Zuid)

Full title

Operationeel Programma Zuid-Nederland 2007-2013 (OP Zuid)

Duration

From: 2007 To: 2013

Policy objectives

2.2.3. R&D cooperation4.3.1. Support to innovative start ups incl Gazelles2.3.1. Direct support of business R&D (grants and loans)3.3.1. Job training (LLL) of researchers and other personnel involved in innovation

Presentation of the measure

The Operational Programme South Netherlands 2007-2013 (OP Zuid) is the joint subsidy programme of the three provinces Limburg,Noord-Brabant and Zeeland and the nine larger cities in this region for activities that are co-financed from the EFRD. The whole EFRD budget forthe region (€186m) is used for this programme. OP Zuid wants to promote competitive capacities, sustainable economic growth and employmentin the South Netherlands. The core objective is to strengthen South Netherlands as a top technological region. The region wants to achieve this inline with the national innovation policy by further developing the existing strong capabilities and by promoting the region as a knowledgeeconomy

The programme has three priorities, each supporting a number of activities.

In the area of knowledge economy, entrepreneurship and innovation support is given for cooperative projects of government, industry andknowledge institutes stimulating demand driven innovation; organising clusters; intensifying R&D capacity esp. at SMEs; support for start-upsand fast-growing companies; training activities. Examples are support for an R&D development project in the area of solar energy (Smit Ovens)and the set-up of the Tilburg Innovation Centre.

In the area of improving the business climate there is support for improving business parks; developing business incubators for the creative sectoras well as investments to promote tourism and attracting businesses (ICT, nature, culture, innovative transportation, etc.). Examples are theredesign of a musical centre in Eindhoven and a project to support promotion of Zeeland in order to get Asian companies to invest in the region.

Priority 3 is meant for initiatives contributing to a safe and attractive working and living environment in the nine larger cities in the SouthNetherlands. Activities supported are stimulation of the combination of working and living, realising local 'top' environments, improving workinglocations in cities, increasing civilian participation and developing local transportation systems. Examples are the design of public space in thecentre of the city of Sittard and a district approach towards economic development in Eindhoven.

Keywords

Innovation cultureInnovation networksStart-ups/spin-offs

Budget, source and type of fundingForm of funding provided

Grants

Policy learning



Extent the measure can be considered as a success and worthy of policy learning

The measure has achieved its intended targets in terms of results (e.g. number of enterprises investing in innovative projects, people trained)

Evidence of outcomes based on evaluation and other evidence

Not possible to assess within the scope of this project without an evaluation

Do's and Don'ts

Not possible to assess within the scope of this project without an evaluation

This measure is recommended as an example of regional good practice to policy-makers from other regions:

Yes

Organisation(s) responsible

Province North-BrabantProvince of Limburg (NL)Stimulus Programme ManagementProvince of Zeeland

Support measure


Support Measure

Title of measure

Peaks in the Delta: Southeast

Full title

Pieken in de Delta: Programma Zuidoost

Duration

From: 2006 To: 2011

Policy objectives

2.2.3. R&D cooperation2.3.1. Direct support of business R&D (grants and loans)3.2.3. Mobility of researchers (e.g. brain-gain, transferability of rights)


PiD southeast is the part of the national PiD programme focussing on Limburg and (Southeast) Brabant. Peaks supported are hightech systems andmaterials, food and nutrition and medical technology and life sciences.

Projects are possible in 4 programme lines: cooperative R&D; cooperation in the value chain (road maps, coupling of design and technology,value chain innovation); knowledge workers (knowledge migrants; international top-level education; keeping knowledge workers in the region;improving interface between education and labour market); open innovation.

The last projects in this programme were awarded early 2011. From 2011 onwards, regional innovation policy will be a provincial responsibilityinstead of a joint national/regional responsibility as under PiD.

Keywords

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Innovation cultureClusterPublic-private partnership

Budget, source and type of funding

Currency: EUR

Source of funding 2010National public funds 9,000,000

Regional public funds 9,000,000

EU Structural funds

Private funds 22,000,000

Other

Form of funding provided

Grants

Policy learning



Evaluation report(s)

programmadocument_zuidoost.pdf


Cooperation between companies and research organisations has improved

Do's and Don'ts

You should identify the regions' strengths, and then assess whether world class quality can be obtained by an additional impulse.


Yes


Province North-BrabantSamenwerkingsverband regio EindhovenProvince of Limburg (NL)

Support measure


Support Measure

Title of measure

Peaks in the Delta: Southwest

Full title

Pieken in de Delta: Programma Zuidwest

Duration

http://www.rim-europa.eu/index.cfm?q=p.file&r=9c2a2361ec02968a47ef4ac79a256de0






From: 2006 To: 2010

Policy objectives

2.2.3. R&D cooperation2.3.1. Direct support of business R&D (grants and loans)3.2.3. Mobility of researchers (e.g. brain-gain, transferability of rights)


PiD southwest is the part of the national PiD programme focussing on (West) Brabant and Zeeland. Sectors supported are logistics,process-industry (specifically: bio-energy and maintenance) and tourism.

Goals are:

Developing the Southwest into a centre for new bio-energy sources;Developing the Southwest into an international hotspot for maintenance (industry, aircraft, cars, ships);Stimulation of innovation within and between logistic chains and attracting new logistic businesses;Attracting innovative tourism companies of high quality, develop new touristic markets and improve the knowledge infrastructure in thisarea.

Every year calls for proposals are held, and companies, knowledge institutes and other organisations can submit proposals.

The last projects in this programme were awarded early 2011. Regional innovation policy will onwards from 2011 be a provincial responsibilityinstead of a joint national/regional responsibility as under PiD. New policies are under development.

Keywords

Innovation cultureClusterPublic-private partnership

Budget, source and type of funding

Currency: EUR

Source of funding 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010National public funds 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000

Regional public funds 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000 3,000,000

EU Structural funds

Private funds

Other

Form of funding provided

GrantsSubsidised loans (including interest allowances)

Policy learning




Cooperation between companies and research organisations has improved. In all areas projects have started.

Do's and Don'ts

Do not put effort in causes already lost and organise broad support for the measures so that all relevant parties can be involved.


Yes


Province North-BrabantBrabant Development Company




Province of ZeelandImpuls

Policy document


Policy Document

Brainport2020

Brainport2020

Organisation responsible


Content

The Brainport2020 Agenda is the follow up of the Brainport Agenda. In this agenda, drafted after an intensive stakeholder process, the regionsketches how it will increase Dutch competitiveness. Based on the existing strengths, an additional public investment up to €1b annually matchedby an investment of businesses and institutes, will lead in 2020 to:

A Top 3 position among Europe's top technology regions (now nr 9)An increase in annual contribution to GNP of €40b to €136bAn economic growth of 3%Three world-renowned field labs, for home care, mobility and sustainable buildingsFull employment

Achievements will focus on People (education, attraction), Technology (open innovation, stronger public R&D infrastructure), Business (morestart-ups and rapid growers, based on stronger chains of SMEs, additional capital and innovative public procurement), Basics (transportconnections, recognisable image, good work environment) and Organisation (cooperation in the triple helix, nationally and internationally).

An implementation plan is drafted with some seventy actions. The urgency programme 2011-2015 contains the actions that require priority.

Year of publication

2011

Link to website

Link: http://www.brainport.nl/algemeen/Brainport_2020_live?session=p0qa0hafdqlpufq99ktab6gj85

Policy document


Policy Document

Ten issues for Brabant: Coalition agreement 2011-2015

Tien voor Brabant: Bestuursakkoord 2011-2015







http://www.brainport.nl/algemeen/Brainport_2020_live?session=p0qa0hafdqlpufq99ktab6gj85




Province North-Brabant

Content

After the March 2011 elections a new coalition took over the Brabant regional government. Their intended policies are laid down in the coalitionagreement "Tien voor Brabant". The coalition agreement states that policies from the previous government as laid down in the 'Agenda forBrabant' will be continued, within tighter financial constraints.

Industry is seen as the motor for prosperity and employment. Focus will, like before, be on those sectors with growth and innovation perspectives.Innovation, valorisation and sustainability will be guiding principles, for industry as well as for SMEs and agriculture and energy. Cooperation isessential, between regions, between sectors and, in the area of education, between the educational institutions, business sector and government.

Year of publication

2011

Link to website

Link: http://null

Policy document


Policy Document

Peaks in the Delta in Southwest Netherlands: Benefiting from a strategic location; Programme document 2008

Pieken in Zuidwest-Nederland: Profiteren van de strategische ligging; Programmadocument 2008



Other organisation(s) involved

Province of Zeeland

Content

PiD southwest is the part of the national PiD programme focussing on (West) Brabant and Zeeland. The region is strategically located in theRhine-Scheldt estuary, in between the large harbours of Rotterdam and Antwerp and gives, within a radius of 500 km access to 300m consumers.This is the programming document 2008 which gives a SWOT for the region and sketches the outlines of the programme. Sectors supported arelogistics, process-industry (specifically: bio-energy and maintenance) and tourism.

Goals are:

Developing the Southwest into a centre for new bio-energy sources;Developing the Southwest into an international hotspot for maintenance (industry, aircraft, cars, ships);Stimulation of innovation within and between logistic chains and attracting new logistic businesses;Attracting innovative tourism companies of high quality, develop new touristic markets and improve the knowledge infrastructure in thisarea.

Every year calls for proposals are announced. Companies, knowledge institutes and other organisations can submit proposals.

Year of publication

2007

Link to website


http://null





Link: http://www.nlinnovatie.nl/pid/beleidsdocumenten

Policy document


Policy Document

Programme Document PiD South-east

Programmadocument PiD Zuidoost 2010



Other organisation(s) involved

Brabant Development Company


Province of Limburg (NL)

NV LIOF, Limburg Investment and Development Corporation

Content

Based on a SWOT analyses for the region and the results of the PiD Southeast regional programme in the period 2006-2010 the operationalprogramme for PiD Southeast in 2010 is given in this document.

Where national innovation programmes aim at strengthening the knowledge position the PiD programme stimulates economic exploitation of theregional knowledge strengths. For the Southeast region (Brabant and Limburg) these strengths are in high tech systems & materials, food &nutrition and medical technology & life sciences. In 2010 €18 mln subsidy is available for these areas for cluster projects, linking design toinnovation, joint road mapping, value chain innovation, human resources management and open innovation projects.

In the period 2006-2009 32 projects were supported in the area high tech systems & materials (€42 mln subsidy to support €96 mln of projectvalue by 215 partners). In the area food & nutrition 6 projects were supported (€7 mln of subsidy) and in the area of life sciences and medicaltechnology 10 projects (€10 mln subsidy for €23 mln project value).

Year of publication

2010

Link to website

Link: http://www.nlinnovatie.nl/pid/beleidsdocumenten

Policy document


http://www.nlinnovatie.nl/pid/beleidsdocumenten








http://www.nlinnovatie.nl/pid/beleidsdocumenten



Policy Document

Brabant Agenda

Agenda van Brabant



Content

At the moment the province of Brabant is faced with a double challenge to strengthen it's profile with a clear agenda for development whilehaving to cut it's budget with €75 mln/year because of reduced income from the national government. (One-off) Investments however can be donefrom the budget of €1 bln that is available because of the sale of the regional power company Essent. Decisions taken now are crucial for thedevelopment of the region. The 'Agenda van Brabant' sketches the policy choices until 2025. The Agenda addresses a whole range of topicsincluding quality of life, integration, sustainability, culture and care. Central is that Brabant wants to become a top region in Europe the field ofresearch and innovation. Highlights in the area of economic and innovation policy are:

Development of a good business climate in the region in relation to global developments (focused on high-tech industry and R&D:clustering; attracting knowledge workers; improve knowledge valorisation; improving international profile)Support for regional specific economic development and innovation within the national innovation policy framework (Peaks in the Delta).

Year of publication

2010

Link to website

Link: http://www.brabant.nl/politiek-en-bestuur/agenda-voor-brabant.aspx

Policy document


Policy Document

Brainport Agenda

Brainport Agenda



Content

In the Brainport Agenda the Region describes the actions to become one of the most competitive regions in Europe. The Brainport Agenda had it'sfocus on 2013, but is now being updated to be of use until 2020.

It includes actions at various levels of government, where Brainport functions as an initiator, coordinator and lobbyist in the areas Technology,People, Cooperation, Business and Basics, e.g.

Structural increase of public R&D investments to the level of competing European Regions, by explicit support from the national level fortechnological core competences of the regionApplication of the excellent knowledge and technology position of Brainport within the European Knowledge InfrastructureGiving an impulse in the area of international knowledge workersStimulation of high-tech entrepreneurshipStimulation of the role of SME's in the value chain of the knowledge industryDevelopment and profiling of Brabant as a top location for R&D centres and related industry.

The progress of the agenda is closely monitored by Brainport Development and an external committee of three very senior people from theinnovation policy world in The Netherlands.


http://www.brabant.nl/politiek-en-bestuur/agenda-voor-brabant.aspx




Year of publication

2009

Link to website

Link: http://www.eindhoven.nl/ondernemersplein/actueel-1/nieuwsarchief-1/Brainport-Agenda-overhandigd-aan-Maria-van-der-Hoeven.htm

Organisation

NEDERLAND WEST-NEDERLAND Region ZeelandNUTS Code NL34

Organisation

Stimulus Programme Management

Stimulus Programma Management

Link: http://www.stimulus.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33&Itemid=6

Fellenoord 27Eindhoven,5612 AA

Mission

Stimulus is an administrative organisation set up by the province of Noord-Brabant to execute the programme management for the OP Zuid(Operational Programme of the EFRD in the South Netherlands).

Activities

Programme management of OP Zuid (providing information about the programme (in cooperation with the provinces of Brabant, Zeeland andLimburg and the nine larger cities in the region), organising the evaluation of proposals (in cooperation with three steering committees), financialand administrative management of the programme)

Organisation


Organisation

Samenwerkingsverband regio Eindhoven

Samenwerkingsverband Regio Eindhoven (SRE)

Link: http://www.sre.nl/web/show

Keizer Karel V Singel 8EINDHOVEN,5615 PE

Mission

At regional level the twenty-one cities and municipalities of the Brainport region (the region around Eindhoven in southeast Brabant) cooperate inthe SRE (Cooperation relationship Eindhoven Region) in order to look after the common interests of the municipalities in the region. The purposeis to bring about a balanced development of the region, in which there are rural districts in addition to a clearly defined urban district, each with itsown set of problems and opportunities. The SRE tasks are mainly of a planning, ordination and co-ordinating nature. The implementation is left tothe municipalities. Local aldermen and mayors participate in the SRE board.

In the area of economic development and innovation the region wants to become one of the leading regions in Europe. The SRE looks after theinterests of the region at other levels of government and promotes cooperation between the municipalities as well as between governments,business community and knowledge institutes.

http://www.eindhoven.nl/ondernemersplein/actueel-1/nieuwsarchief-1/Brainport-Agenda-overhandigd-aan-Maria-van-der-Hoeven.htm



http://www.stimulus.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33&Itemid=6



http://www.sre.nl/web/show

business community and knowledge institutes.

Activities

In the economic domain attention is focused on creating optimal conditions in the region for high-tech business and innovation. In order to letBrainport become a leading region in Europe the SRE coordinates regional policy making in this area, tackles issues that stretch across municipalborders and is participating in Brainport Development (see the specific item on Brainport Development in this RIM).

Furthermore the SRE operates a small 'Region Fund' to co-finance projects from third parties, including EU, national authorities, the province,knowledge institutes and the business sector. A specific role for the region is in the planning and development of business parks where supply anddemand are monitored and matched.

Organisation


Organisation



Link: http://www.brainportdevelopment.nl/nl/

Emmasingel 11Eindhoven,5611 AZ

Mission

Brainport Development is a regional development company that by improving the international competitive position of the Brainport Region(Southeast Brabant) wants to increase the prosperity and wellbeing of the region and in this way contribute to making The Netherlands cleaner,safer and more careful and sustainable.

Brainport is especially active in linking public and private activities.

Activities

In order to contribute to its mission Brainport Development is:

Branding the region nationally and internationally as an internationally leading high-tech regionDeveloping projects and programmes with companies and knowledge institutesOffering flexible, small-scale business premises with facilities in business centresSupporting SME companies with advice and capitalAcquiring new businesses to the region

Furthermore Brainport is initiating and carrying out a diverse range of structure enhancing projects. Brainport is setting regional developmentagendas (with senior management from private and public organisations), monitoring the regional economy, organising network activities andlobbying at national and EU level.

An example is the development of the Brainport 2020 agenda where stakeholders from public and private organisations are developing a commonvision on the future of the region and the activities needed to realise this foreseen future.

Organisation


Organisation


Provincie Noord-Brabant

Link: http://www.brabant.nl/



http://www.brainportdevelopment.nl/nl/



http://www.brabant.nl/

Brabantlaan 1's-Hertogenbosch,5216 TV

Mission

The Province is the regional authority. They have a number of legal roles (e.g. in the area of spatial planning, environmental permitting andenforcement, and in youth care).

Activities in the area of innovation are not based on a legal role, but based on the mission of the Province to make Brabant a 'colourful,entrepreneurial and social province'. The Province wants to be 'connecting', 'vigorous', 'innovative' and 'reliable'.

In the area of economy and innovation the Province wants to keep on belonging to the leading European knowledge and innovation regions, inorder to provide sustainable wealth for all inhabitants of Brabant.

Activities

Activities in the field of innovation are embedded in the regional economic policy and relate mainly to creating the right framework conditions.The policy is laid down in the 'Agenda for Brabant'. The Agenda aims at the development of a good business climate in the region in relation toglobal developments (focused on high-tech industry and R&D: clustering; attracting knowledge workers; improve knowledge valorisation;improving international profile).

There is also financial support for regional specific economic development and innovation within the national innovation policy framework(Peaks in the Delta).

Additional financial support may also be available for larger scale investments. In the recent past the province supported (with other parties) theHigh-tech campus in Eindhoven (where now more than 8000 researchers and entrepreneurs are working) and the Automotive campus in Helmond.

Organisation


Organisation

Brabant Development Company

Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij

Goirleseweg 15Tilburg,5026 PB

Mission

The mission of the N.V. Noord-Brabant Development Agency (BOM) is to create, improve, maintain and develop the industrial structure inNoord-Brabant by offering a range of professional services. The BOM was established in 1983 and is funded and financed by the Dutch State andthe Province of Noord-Brabant. Noord-Brabant is a region in the south of the Netherlands.

Activities

The BOM Foreign Investment Department assists potential foreign investors in every field required, free of charge. The BOM organizesfact-finding trips, visits potential investors abroad and supports in site-selection and negotiations with national and local authorities.The BOM Venture Capital Department finances innovative and financially healthy companies by providing equity capital and subordinatedloans of up to 1,8 million Euros.The BOM New Business Development department supports R&D programs and initiates and stimulates innovative industrial projects.Moreover, the BOM offers access to its network with the local, national and European business communities as well as with universities,research centers and financial institutions. Furthermore, the BOM provides financing for the above-mentioned projects as well as privatelyowned companies which need equity financing.BOM Business parks focus on the development of the regions industrial estates. BOM is responsible for redeveloping 1,295 hectareswhich equate to around 25% of the region's current industrial estates.




Appendix D Explanation of factors of Innovation Performance, Governance and Policy

D.1. Innovation Performance Factors

After having normalised all indicators to a common range of 0 to 1, a factor analysis or principle component analysis has been used to identify the main patterns, reducing the eight indicators into three main factors or components of innovation performance. The resulting factors can also be seen as composite or summary indicators.

Innovation performance factors

Innovative

entrepreneurship Technological

innovation Public

knowledge Non-technological innovators 0.91 Technological innovators 0.86 Higher education R&D 0.52 Non-R&D innovation expenditure -0.84 Business R&D 0.77 Patents 0.71 Government R&D 0.89 Tertiary educated 0.64 The first factor can be labelled as ‘Innovators or Innovative entrepreneurship’. It is mostly based on a high score on the share of both non-technological innovators (those introducing market- and or organisational innovations) as well as technological innovators (product and or process innovations) among SME’s in the region. This factor therefore identifies those regions where a large share of all SME’s are innovators.

The second factor is labelled ‘Technological innovation’ because it mostly refers to patent generating business R&D with relative low score on non-R&D innovation expenditures as share of their turnover. In regions where this factor shows a high score, technology generating firms are well represented.

The third factor is labelled ‘Public knowledge’. This component of innovation performance is based on the co-location of R&D expenditures at government research institutes and to a lesser extent on the share of population with tertiary education.

D.2. Governance Factors

The first distinctive governance characteristic is labelled ‘Autonomy’. For regions where the regional innovation strategy is politically binding and containing fixed targets, we also find the highest degree of both general institutional autonomy as well as autonomy regarding innovation policy. In essence, formalisation contributes to the autonomy factor and autonomy is associated with an assessment of innovation policy as effective.

The second distinctive characteristic is named: ‘Relying on Structural Funds’. It is based on the similarity in the answers regarding the strategic relevance and significance in terms of funding of EU Structural Funds for regional innovation policy. At the same time these regions report a low level of cooperation with other regions and the innovation system can be characterised as more public-driven.

A third distinctive factor is made up of the similar answers to the two other questions on coordination, namely the existence of vertical and horizontal coordination mechanisms. Finally, a fourth factor is labelled ‘Central, top-down’ because they combine a centralised policy delivery and top-down approach in policy design.


Governance Factors

Autonomy

Relying on Structural

Funds

Coordina-tion

mecha-nisms

Central, top-down

-How formally binding is the regional innovation strategy document on the regional public authorities ?

.84

- The general degree of institutional autonomy of the regional authorities in the region

.73

-To what degree is priority setting, design and monitoring of innovation policy subject to the design and of formalisation of the general set-up of institutions tasked with the development of innovation policy in your region (1=informal, 3= formal)

.68

- Degree of institutional autonomy of regional authorities in your region with regard to the design and implementation of regional innovation policies

.68

- How effective is the regional governance process? .58 - The relevance of the EU Structural Funds for regional innovation policy, for strategy development

.79

- The significance of the EU Structural Funds for regional innovation policy, in terms of funding

.70

- Inter-regional co-ordination projects and mechanisms (e.g. co-operation between agencies in different regions)

-.68

- Characterise the regional innovation system according to key drivers of innovative activities (1=private, 2=different, 3=public)

.68

- Horizontal coordination projects and mechanisms between regional players (e.g. inter-departmental working groups, council or multi-sector platforms)

.80

- Vertical co-ordination projects and mechanisms between local, regional, national and European authorities involved in designing or implementing innovation policy

.73

- Regional system of policy delivery is centralised (3), mixed (2), or de-centralised (1)

.81

- Design of regional innovation policies follows a top-down approach ( as opposed to bottom-up)

.80

D.3. Policy Factors

The first distinctive factor regarding the innovation policies is labelled ‘Public innovation policies’. A high contribution to this factor comes from the survey questions regarding: policies for public sector innovation, for open innovation, public procurement, and theme based policies aiming at societal goals.

The second policy factor is labelled: ‘Demand & service innovation policy’ because of the co-existence of demand-side policies and service innovation policies.

The third policy factor is named: ‘Cluster & S-I partner-ship policy’ since it is based on the frequent combination of Cluster policies and policies promoting new forms of public-private-partnerships for Science-Industry (S-I) co-operation and in addition the implementation of eco-innovation policies contributes to this factor.

The fourth factor is labelled ‘Research supply policy’ because it is based on the positive answers to the question on supporting research efforts (the supply side), in combination with an opposite negative answer to the question on ‘market and innovation culture (which is more on the demand side).

‘Policy making support’ is the name we have given to the fifth policy, similar to the main indicator. The last policy factor is ‘HR, creation & growth innovators’ which combines human capital development with policy aimed at creation and growth of innovative firms.


Innovation Policy factors

Public innovation policies

Demand & service innovation policy

Cluster & S-I

partner-ship

policy

Research supply policy

Policy making support

HR , creation & growth innovato

rs Policies for public sector innovation

.72

Policies for open innovation .66 Public procurement policies .64 Theme-based policies aimed at broader societal goals

.62

Demand-side policies .79 Policies for innovation in services .50 Support for the internationalisation of innovation policy.

.47

Cluster policies .70 Policies promoting new forms of public-private-partnerships for science-industry co-operation

.61

Eco-innovation policies .58 Innovation related tax policies .57 Support research efforts .74 Market and innovation culture policies

-.62

Support to policy making and horizontal policies

-.79

Support human capital development

.82

Support creation and growth of innovative enterprises

.67


Appendix E Statistical data

Indicator Noord-Brabant (2000)

Noord-Brabant

(2008 or most recent)

EU 27 (2008 or

most recent)

Per Capita GDP (in Current EUR) 26,987 33,391.2 (2006)

25,131.9

Growth of Regional per Capita GDP (in %)

8.5 5.4 (2006)

0.7

Unemployment Rate (in %) 2.4 2.3 7

Gross Expenditure on R&D (GERD; in current EUR)

1,824 2,341.7 (2005)

237,000.2

Share of Business Expenditure on R&D in GERD (in %)

88.3 90.1 (2005)

63.9

EPO Patent Applications (by Priority Year)

1,822.54 714.31 (2006)

37,689.12 (2006)

Share of Population Involved in Life-long Learning (in %)

13.13 16.12 9.34

Non-R&D innovation expenditures of all enterprises as

a percentage of turnover (normalised scores within a 0 (lowest) to 1 (highest) range)

N/A N/A 0.41 (2006)

Source: Eurostat and Community Innovation Survey


Appendix F RIM survey responses

Noord‐Brabant(NL41) Average Categories

0 1 2 3 4 5

Governance

PleaseindicatethegovernancelevelthatismostimportantforthedesignandimplementaConofinnovaConpolicyintheregion(1=regionallevel,2=naConallevel,3=sub‐regionallevel) 2 1,52 50% 48% 2%

PleaseassessthegeneraldegreeofinsCtuConalautonomyoftheregionalauthoriCesintheregion(1=regionalauthorityisanadministraCveappointeeofthenaConalgovernment,2=regionalauthorityincludingelectedcouncilbutnolegislaCvepowersandnoorminortaxraisingpowers,3=federatedenCtywithlegislaCvepowerinsomebutnotallfields,limitedornotaxraisingpowers) 2 2,11 23% 43% 34%

PleaseassessthedegreeofinsCtuConalautonomyofregionalauthoriCesinyourregionwithregardtothedesignandimplementaConofregionalinnovaConpolicies(1=verylow,2=low,3=average,4=high,5=veryhigh) 3 3,10 7% 18% 39% 31% 5%

ThedesignofregionalinnovaConpoliciesfollowsa(1=boPom‐upapproach,2=inputfrombothsides,3=top‐downapproach,4=strongtop‐downapproach) 2 2,25 11% 57% 28% 4%

TowhatdegreeispriorityseQng,designandmonitoringofinnovaConpolicysubjecttothedesignandofformalisaConofthegeneralset‐upofinsCtuConstaskedwiththedevelopmentofinnovaConpolicyinyourregion(1=informal,2=mixed,3=formal) 1 2,19 18% 45% 37%

IstherearegionalinnovaConstrategyintheformofapublisheddocument(1=yes,2=no) 1 1,34 66% 34%

HowformallybindingisthisdocumentontheregionalpublicauthoriCes?(1=anowniniCaCvedocumentofanon‐publicbodyorpartnershipwithnobindingconstraintsonregionalauthoriCes,2=a'pact'signedbyabroad‐basedpublic‐privatepartnership,3=apoliCcallybindingpolicycontainingfixedtargets) 2 2,21 25% 29% 46%

PleaseindicateiftherearehorizontalcoordinaConprojectsandmechanismsbetweenregionalplayers(e.g.inter‐departmentalworkinggroups,councilorpla[ormswithactorsfromdifferentsectors):(1=notyetverydeveloped,2=somewhatdeveloped,3=quitewelldeveloped) 2 2,26 13% 49% 39%

Pleaseindicateifthereareinter‐regionalco‐ordinaConprojectsandmechanisms(e.g.co‐operaConbetweenagenciesindifferentregions)(1=notyetverydeveloped,2=somewhatdeveloped,3=quitewelldeveloped) 3 1,88 27% 59% 14%

PleaseindicateifthereareverCcalco‐ordinaConprojectsandmechanismsbetweenlocal,regional,naConalandEuropeanauthoriCesinvolvedindesigningorimplemenCnginnovaConpolicy(1=notyetverydeveloped,2=somewhatdeveloped,3=quitewelldeveloped) 3 2,02 20% 58% 22%

PleasecharacterisetheregionalinnovaConsystemaccordingtokeydriversofinnovaCveacCviCes(1=private‐driven,2=mixed,3=public‐driven) 1 2,26 12% 50% 38%

Pleaseindicateiftheregionalsystemofpolicydeliveryiscentralisedorde‐centralised(1=ratherdecentralised,2=mixedform,3=rathercentralised) 2 2,47 5% 42% 52%

PleaseindicatethesignificanceoftheEUStructuralFundsforregionalinnovaConpolicy,intermsoffunding(1=<10%,2=11‐24%,3=25‐49%,4=50‐75%,5=>75%) 1 2,96 14% 30% 19% 19% 18%

PleaseindicatetherelevanceoftheEUStructuralFundsforregionalinnovaConpolicy,forstrategydevelopment(1=verylow,2=low,3=average,4=high,5=veryhigh) 2 3,27 11% 17% 25% 28% 19%

IsthereaspecificStructuralFunds’regionaloperaConalprogrammefortheregion(1=yes,2=no) 1 1,10 90% 10%

If1,isthisStructuralFundsROPadministeredattheregionallevel.(1=yes,2=no) 1 1,12 88% 12%

Involvement of the Region in Hot Innova4on / RTDI Policy Topics (0 = none, 1 = planned, 2 = implemented)

SupportfortheinternaConalisaConofinnovaConpolicy. 2 1,09 34% 24% 43%

Clusterpolicies 2 1,28 31% 10% 59%

PoliciespromoCngnewformsofpublic‐private‐partnershipsforscience‐industryco‐operaCon 2 1,21 28% 22% 50%

PoliciesforopeninnovaCon 2 0,68 58% 15% 27%

Demand‐sidepolicies 0 0,55 64% 18% 18%

PoliciesforinnovaConinservices 0 0,77 52% 19% 29%

PoliciesforpublicsectorinnovaCon 0 0,64 60% 17% 24%

Publicprocurementpolicies 0 0,39 72% 17% 11%

InnovaConrelatedtaxpolicies 0 0,37 77% 9% 14%

Eco‐innovaConpolicies 1 0,80 50% 19% 30%

Theme‐basedpoliciesaimedatbroadersocietalgoals 1 0,72 53% 22% 25%

Priori4es on which regional innova4on policy is most strongly focused (1 = very low, 2 = low, 3 = average, 4 = high, 5 = very high)

Supporttopolicymakingandhorizontalpolicies 1 2,71 21% 24% 32% 12% 12%

Supportresearchefforts 2 3,94 1% 12% 20% 25% 42%

Supporthumancapitaldevelopment 4 3,41 3% 17% 29% 39% 12%

SupportcreaConandgrowthofinnovaCveenterprises 5 3,85 2% 9% 23% 37% 30%

MarketandinnovaConculture 3 2,84 13% 24% 37% 16% 10%

Technopolis Belgium Avenue de Tervuren 12 B-1040 Brussels Belgium T +32 2 737 74 40 F +32 2 727 74 49 E [email protected] www.technopolis-group.com

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