DepoSIt – Development and testing of the European Innovation Audit tool for Social Innovation

The DepoSIt project, funded by the Horizon 2020 programme, is aimed at developing and testing an evidence-based innovation support scheme able to combine economic and social aspects.

 

The DepoSIt project, funded by the Horizon 2020 programme, is aimed at developing and testing an evidence-based innovation support scheme able to combine economic and social aspects.

Innovation support agencies play a substantial role as intermediates for SME’s innovation process by designing and delivering support programmes. However, despite the recent strong engagements and delivery of diverse innovation support schemes, there is still a lack of evidence-based results able to demonstrate the effectiveness of these newly developed schemes. Furthermore, increasingly demanding social and environmental challenges require more dynamic matching of social needs with the economic sectors and provision of best innovative crosscutting solutions able to seize the diverse business opportunities tied to Social Innovations.

DepoSIt project will addresses these two challenges by developing and testing an Innovation Audit tool able to combine the standard techniques for boosting innovation capacities and additional measures identifying and fostering Social Innovation potential of SMEs. The consortium foresees to develop a significantly improved innovation support scheme elevated with Social Innovation features and to test it in a real environment condition. In this scope, three cross-cutting sectors have been defined, based on the regional Smart Specialisation Strategies of the DepoSIt partners: Smart health, Smart mobility and Smart living.

This Innovation support scheme will be tested by the application of the Randomised Controlled Trial methodology to assess its effectiveness. Successful experimentation results will lead to the scheme validation and its upscaling.

Furthermore, DepoSIt project aims to serve as a best practice example in this way to stimulate and deploy additional innovation agencies to become more effective and efficient in design, delivery and especially in experimentation of innovation support schemes.

Partners

  • Steinbeis Innovation gGmbH (lead partner), Germany
  • Croatian Chamber of Economy CCE, Croatia
  • Agentia Pentru Dezvoltare Regionalasud-Muntenia, Romania
  • Fomento De San Sebastian SA, Spain
  • Stichting Business Development Friesland, Netherlands
  • Friuli Innovazione Research and Technology Transfer Centre, Italy

 Activities

  • Assessment of the currently used Innovation Audit schemes by the Project partners
  • Development of the significantly improved Innovation Audit tool with the inclusion of Social Innovation aspects
  • Examination of the developed Innovation support scheme by the application of the Randomised Control Trials (RCT) methodology, engaging at least 60 SMEs
  • Performance of a set of capacity building (within the consortium) and promotional and outreach activities (outside of the consortium) to engage Innovation Agencies in the policy experimentation and related impact assessment

Project duration: Sept. 2019 – Feb. 2022

Visit the official website > www.deposit.eu

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