INSME's Interviews

INSME Association’s President talks about the future of the INSME Association and the theme of the INSME Annual Meeting 2006

INSME: Based on your experience, what are the main issues influencing innovation policy creation today, both at national and international level?

Mrs. Callejòn: It is pertinent to observe that the term innovation does not refer exclusively to R&D activities, but also to the wider activities of the firm that involve innovation related to process and product innovation, adoption of information and telecommunications technologies, changes in organization, management, strategy, marketing, logistic and design. Decisions which represent significant changes for the firm or, more interesting, for the market.

The Oslo Manual (last version 1997, OECD) contains the internationally accepted concept of innovation. Innovation is defined as “the implementation/commercialisation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service) or process (production or delivery method) into the market or the firm”.

In contrast, the more usual definition of R&D, founded in the Frascati Manual (last version 1964, OECD), is “research and development (R&D) comprise creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications. R&D is a term covering three activities: basic research, applied research, and experimental development”.

Innovations can be achieved not only as a result of developing R&D activities, but also as the consequence of the experience, the know-how of the firm, and the capacity to adapt and replicate innovations developed in other markets or firms. Business innovation is the confluence of many capacities put together. Its basis is knowledge and human capital. A firm cannot innovate systematically without a strong emphasis in human capital.

The different groups of innovative firms and their most ususal activities in each case are outlined in this graph.

INSME: What do you view as the contribution of international events like the INSME Annual Meeting to influencing or inspiring concrete action-taking by policy makers and innovation players?

Mrs. Callejòn: The contribution of INSME is quite relevant, by way of highlighting the most common problems that SMEs are facing up in most developed countries. Of course, not all SMEs share the same difficulties. Entrepreneurial innovation or the lack of it depends on the characteristics of the firm, on its innovation culture, on its economic and administrative environment and on several other factors. Besides, national innovation systems are heterogeneous partly because they are in different stages of development.

The INSME Annual Meeting represent a good opportunity for firms and policy makers to share common problems and discuss alternative solutions to give an opportunity for cooperation. For example, the theme of the INSME International Conference 2005 was “International cooperation to seize innovation opportunities for SMEs”. It reflected a general concern about this topic that was later confirmed in November 2005 with the European Commission ERA-NET call to foster collaboration between Innovation Agencies on innovation programmes.

Besides, the OCDE moral sponsorship and consultive status by UNIDO’s Industrial Development Board achieved in 2004 by INSME has enhanced international recognition of our institution, so that more agents will be interested in participating on its events, with the consequent gain in variety of ideas and potential solutions.

INSME: The theme of the INSME International Conference 2006 is “Boosting Innovation by Bridging the Knowledge Gap: a Developer-User Approach”. Regardless of the specific topics and issues that will be developed during the conference, what does this theme mean to you? What are your expectations for the outcomes of this conference?

Mrs. Callejòn: European countries have a good scientific base but weaker results in terms of technological innovation and economic performance compared to USA or Japan. It is widely recognized that one of the reasons is the knowledge gap between developers and users of knowledge in most EU members. Discrepancies between firms as users and universities or research centers as developers arise as a consequence of the scarce cooperation existing between them. Very often university’s reseachers are too much focused on publishing their results instead of on paying attention to the enterprises’ and therefore the customer’s needs.

On the other hand, firms are more interested in applied reseach, in order to develop new products that will be introduced into the market. So they do not pay much attention to basic research developed by universities, although it could be useful for them. Moreover, the movement of researchers from public or private research organizations into firms faces numerous obstacles so that the diffusion of knowledge and ideas is not as fluid as it is desirable. A good option to reduce this knowledge gap is establishing technology transfer institutions (TTI), either independent or dependent on public research organizations. This allows narrowing collaboration between both agents and therefore fosters the commercialisation process of reseach results and newly developed technologies. Technological Centers (TC) are also a crucial agent in fostering knowledge transfer from universities to enterprises. They promote firms’ participation in research and innovation activities.

The principal purpose of the INSME Pilot Projects consists on stimulating technology transfer, focusing on intermediaries and their networks. For example, “Fashion Net” supports innovation and technology transfer in the fashion systems while “The Italian Network for the Diffusion of Innovation and Technology Transfer” aims to foster sectoral and factorial networks in Italy.

INSME: The INSME Annual Meeting 2006 will also be an occasion to unveil and discuss future plans for the development to the INSME Association. What is your vision of the Association, also taking into consideration Spanish priorities for 2006 and onwards?

Mrs. Callejòn: The biggest challenge of INSME consists of finding common problems to the different innovation systems, so that they inspire the dialogue between agents and create a general perception of the potential problem. In Spain, enterprises innovate less than it would be optimum. This is in part due to the smaller average size of Spanish firms, relative to countries like Germany, France or UK, and also that some groups of firms are lag behind in the use of advanced technologies, in particular ICT’s . It is necessary to strengthen the entrepreneurial and innovative culture among our firms and citizens. Therefore, the Spanish government directs its efforts to increasing firms’ innovation effort. To achieve this objective it is necessary to seek an increase in the entrepreneurial and management capabilities of our firms. To compete globally firms need advanced and sophisticated management skills. To overcome barriers associated to small size, firms should cooperate through innovation networks (clusters) and other cooperation agreements. In particular it is crucial for SME to belong to international networks.

In my view the main INSME task is to promote networking among public policy agents and other institutions related to SME in order to contribute to knowledge transfer, management skills, and the constitution of international consortiums for research and development and international expansion.