The Regional Innovation Poles of Central Macedonia (RIPCM)
A regional innovation policy practice in Central Macedonia (GR), has been the Regional Innovation Poles of Central Macedonia (RIPCM). The vision of the RIPCM has been to boost competitiveness in the region through the application of ICTs in a wide spectrum of productive, commercial, enterprise and administrative activities.
The long term development strategy of the RIPCM was to create a regional long lasting solid innovation system. This strategy arose under the consideration of the most important weaknesses ofGreeceand of the Greek regions, as recorded in the European Innovation Scoreboards. The major issues that the policy focused on were: the poor innovation performance of regional enterprises in terms of new products, patents, inter-business research, innovation expenditures etc, the limited attraction of multinational companies and the restricted conduction of knowledge-intensive activities in the region.
The policy aimed to assist the development and dissemination of innovative products and services through technology platforms and cooperation consortia. To achieve that aim, ICT enterprises cooperated with R&D and technology transfer organizations, for the joint development of products; the utilization of research results; measurement and certification of quality and monitoring of markets - technologies.
The RIPCM was planned as a regional system of institutions and partnerships that reinforce innovation, mainly in the ICT sector and also to other sectors of industry and services, dealing with their shortcomings in the fields of research and development, patent acquisition, development of new products, and access to international markets.
In total 65 organisations were officially involved in the implementation of the RIPCM forming 57 working groups and through its implementation specific results were recorded including the development of 14 new products (most of them are now on the market), the creation of five spin-off companies and the establishment of three technology platforms. Apart from that, the most significant output was the successful cooperation of a large number of enterprises, research organisations and innovation institutions in the formation of the regional innovation ecosystem.
The implementation of the policy in a specific sector initiated the formation of a permanent mechanism for the support of innovation and innovation culture in the region and had a direct effect to the competitiveness of the regional enterprises through the improvement of their innovation capability and thus an indirect effect to the development, employment and cohesion indicators of the region.
The case of the Association of ICT companies of Northern Greece
The Association of ICT companies ofNorthern Greece(SEPVE) actively participated in the RIPCM. SEPVE along with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, URENIO Research Unit was responsible for the RIPCM’s “horizontal” action “Dissemination of business and sector intelligence”.
Business intelligence is the systematic monitoring of markets and technologies with a view to the improvement of efficiency in business management, discovering new markets, and assessing future needs. The contribution of business intelligence in the field of innovation is that it can assist R&D departments, through the systematic monitoring of technology, innovation, and market trends.
The action “Dissemination of business and sector intelligence” resulted in a series of activities supported by SEPVE and focused on the ICT SMEs of the region. Firstly, awareness was created for business intelligence applications on ICT businesses, including market analysis, alternative technologies analysis, and cooperation opportunities with vendors. Secondly, the action initiated the application of sector intelligence in the ICT sector including the development of market and technology watch system, systemizing the information flow.
The main element of this action were the series of dissemination and demonstration activities that supported ICT SMEs of the region in adopting business intelligent technologies and introduced the concept of sector intelligence along with its benefits and most importantly the competitive advantages that those tools can bring to the companies.
