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The project studies the effects of subsidized collaboration on spatial innovation capacity – invitation to join the pool of experts

VTT and University of Eastern Finland jointly launced new Business Finland funded project “Effects of subsidized collaboration on spatial innovation capacity, COSPIN”. The project is designed to produce new knowledge for policy makers who are responsible for developing policies related to RDI subsidies, regional development and innovation capacity, innovation policy and demand side innovation activity. These are all timely topics in the Programme of Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s Government but also topics that reach to understand past and future transformation of innovation policy, and that are thus, grounded on highly scientific premises.

The project explores the impact of subsidized collaboration on spatial innovation capacity in following working packages:

WP 1 investigates the impacts of subsidized RDI activity on regional knowledge spillovers and innovation capacity. It produces new knowledge on issues such as: which types of regions and sectors are the most successful ones in terms of drawing in RDI funding; whether RDI funding has an impact on regional innovation capacity and which types of regions and sectors benefit the most from RDI funding in terms of knowledge spillovers and improved innovation capacity.

WP 2 traces impacts of informal spatial knowledge linkages on companies’ innovation activity. It provides new knowledge on issues such as: do publicly supported companies engage in wider or different set of collaboration than non-supported ones; what is the relationship –if any– between receiving RDI funding, the complexity of externally accessed knowledge, and the type of source (company, university) of this external knowledge; and what roles does geographic distance and the general regional surrounding play in this context.

WP 3 investigates the impacts of subsidized collaboration on demand-side innovation, regional knowledge spillovers and societal challenges. It provides new insights and policy recommendations on how to support public procurement agencies and companies to develop demand-side innovation and to develop useful networks and collaboration; how to scale PPI-driven solutions from local or regional level to national and international levels; and how public procurement for innovation can be used to increase societal common good and address grand societal challenges in Finland and abroad.