Activities
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..:: The Nordic INNOCATE consortium
Co-ordinated by NIFU STEP in Oslo, the INNOCATE consortium has examined indicator systems of the Nordic economies in support of innovation policies. Work has been undertaken in conjunction with another Nordic effort to identify policy-relevant Nordic innovation indicators (NIND), headed by Statistics Finland. These indicator systems, as seen most clearly in terms of the European Innovation Scoreboard exercise, tend to have a strong bias towards measuring levels of R&D intensive and “high tech” resources. In addition, they are considered by many to be based on simplified assumptions and databases insufficiently representative of the economies in question as a whole. There is thus a risk that the present set of indicators will provide inadequate information on parts of society which have a stronger potential than suggested by the statistics now in use.
The objective of the project is to identify the most relevant indicators for innovation policy and how these indicators can be interpreted and used in policy design, starting with statistical analysis and benchmarking of the Nordic countries. The analysis reviews strengths, weaknesses and problems of interpretation of currently available indicators and advances suggestions for new indicators better adapted to the heterogeneity of their economies to be used by policy makers in the Nordic countries.
Innocate does not produce final, detailed recommendations but should be seen as one of many activities aimed at assisting Nordic policy makers in interpreting existing indicators. It proposes models for developing new sets of indicators that are better adapted to the prime policy issues of our time and the specific features of our economies.
The project, to be completed in 2008, is supported by the Nordic Innovation Center.
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