New EU discussion paper and consultation: Fostering user-driven innovation through clusters
“Involving users in the innovation process seems to be increasingly recognised as an important challenge not only for enterprises, but also for innovation support providers,” reports the website of Pro Inno Europe, an innovation policy initiative of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry.
How “user-driven” innovation can best be supported, and what role clusters and cluster organisations can play in this process, are questions being put to the Europe INNOVA and PRO INNO Europe communities.
To facilitate the discussion in view of developing better policies together, a draft discussion paper “Fostering user-driven innovation through clusters” has been prepared by the Support of Innovation Unit of the Directorate-General for Enterprise & Industry of the European Commission. This discussion may also inspire the forthcoming European Innovation Plan currently being prepared by the Commission.
Stakeholders are invited to provide online comments through this website until 31 October 2009. During this period, the latest version of the draft discussion paper can be downloaded in Word format and contributors can upload their own new versions with comments, new text suggestions and examples in ‘track changes’ mode. While contributors must identify themselves to the web exchange moderator, they can choose for their contributions to be displayed anonymously. This will allow the moderator to contact contributors in case clarifications are needed before new versions are uploaded.
