Edurne Zubiria-Ferriols (p), Teresa Martínez-Fernández, Francesc Xavier Molina-Morales

Diego Sande

Society is undergoing unprecedented processes of accelerated and disruptive change, in which the growing and unstoppable urbanization process, the consumption of natural resources, the loss of cultural identity, new digital technologies, the demographic challenge and depopulation are generating new paradigms in many key aspects for society in general, and for cities in particular. In the words of Professor Z. Bauman (2004), we live in times of change and permanent transformation, "liquid times", which require, on the part of the Public Administrations rapid adaptations and ansewers to thenew needs and demands of a society that requires a greater number of services, faster and of higher quality. Society is changing rapidly and the public sector also needs to adapt to the speed of these changes. To boost these innovation processes so that they are solid, lasting and with the capacity to impact the economic and social development of a population, local governments committed to innovation and local development are required. This type of entities should favor open government actions using different tools and networks to connect with society, promote innovation spaces and environments in cities, open to participation with a perspective of co-creation of innovation and knowledge. From this perspective, our research attempts to determine some factors that allow cities to advance through public innovation, turning them into poles of development and not merely being mere recipients of innovations. To this end, and based on the increased interest in public innovation, our objective is to present and analize a successful case of public-private collaboration, through a process of knowledge creation and transfer involving the Public Administration, civil society and the private sector. This study allows us, based on innovation management and knowledge management, to highlight the relevance of innovation in Local Public Administrations, providing a model for innovation management in the field of public management in general and Local Entities in particular. Based on the experience gained, an action protocol is proposed.

Juliane Schwarz, Annum Rafique (p)

Edurne Zubiria-Ferriols

University-based innovation intermediaries or “STEM assets” are claimed to play an important role in the development of innovation ecosystems, and in turn driving regional growth and development. They can be defined as physical facilities dedicated largely to the translation, development and transfer of scientific, technological or engineering innovation and knowledge and expertise which relates to new or improved business processes, products or services. A UK Research and Innovation funded large scale study in the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom compares different university-based STEM assets and their impact to regional development.

Findings of this study indicate that innovation intermediaries are an important magnet for talent into the region, contributing to a deep pool of highly skilled labour that makes the region attractive to other businesses. In-house skills are also made available to other businesses through joint research projects, contract research and consultancy services.

The focus of this paper is on one of the case studies: STEAMhouse. This is a university-based innovation intermediaries at Birmingham City University, Birmingham UK. The aim of STEAMhouse is to incorporate a highly active creative sector in Birmingham into the regional innovation ecosystem. STEAM is an approach that originates in education research with the aim to include the Arts into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine).

The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews and the purpose is to gain understanding of the particular contribution of this STEM asset in relation to: (1) Bringing together academia and industry (2) facilitating knowledge exchange; and (3) Setting local priorities, strategies and agendas.

Victor Blazquez (p), Ricardo Aguado, Alfredo Biffi (p)

Annum Rafique

In recent decades, science and technology parks (STPs) have been contributing to regional development. Different metrics and methods of measuring have been proposed to calculate this positive contribution. In this study, we propose a methodology to calculate the social value generated by organizations towards STPs. With the collaboration of the International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation (IASP), we create an initial pool (community) of fourteen STPs who are interested in the topic of social value analysis to test this methodology. We obtain preliminary results of the social value generated by fourteen European STPs for each of the relevant STP stakeholders, thus deriving summary values and indicators useful to the comparison. This methodology allows us to present the social value predominantly using secondary data, which is available in open sources of information. In addition, we focus on three Italian STPs based in the region of Lombardy, to explore how organisational conditions in the STP management institutions can condition the results in terms of the social value achieved by STPs. For explaining the performance of the STPs we are interested in analyse in depth the origin of these performance: at the end of the presentation and discussion of the social and economic state of the Italian parks, we suppose that one of performance source could be the governance and management systems of the STPs. In a socio-organizational context we propose a starting model to analyse these variables as one of the possible perspectives in progression of our research.

Diego Sande (p)

Victor Blazquez

As a Convergence Objective Autonomous Community of the European Union, Andalusia was a beneficiary of the significant volume of European resources for regional innovation mobilized by the 2007-2013 Technology Fund and the 2014-2020 Smart Growth programme. For this reason, we evaluate the impact of these technology policies in Andalusia through the main business innovation indicators, differentiating companies´ size, participation in innovation and rol. The proposed analysis (through the study of projects, funds received, etc.) seeks to identify the impact of participation in this programme for Andalusian companies according to their characteristics based on the impact on the main business innovation indicators available (investment and expenditure on research and development). This impact is uneven depending on the characteristics of the companies.