Six Countries Programme Conference

1

• Six Countries Programme Conference
• "The Future of Research"
• 21-22 April 2005
• Effective research changing perspectives for
  public RD labs
• Isabelle Collins
• Technopolis Ltd

2
Background

• Based on study of new instruments in IST Thematic
  Priority of FP6
• 5 year assessment report on Information Society
  Technologies RTD (FP5 and FP6)
• Subsequent studies on IST and other Framework
  Programme activities

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IST in the Framework Programmes
FP3 FP4 FP5 FP6
No of organisations in funded projects 6291 5335 8026 3351
Number of projects 2131 1743 2786 374
Average number of organisations per project 7.1 7.08 7.16 15.13
Average number of projects per organisation 2.4 2.31 2.38 1.69
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The New Instruments

• Integrated Projects (IPs)
• Networks of Excellence (NoEs)
• Specific Targeted Research Projects (STRePs)
• Specific Support Actions
• Co-ordinated Actions

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Integrated Projects

• very large projects
• holistic work plans that connect a range of
  research, development and deployment activities
• limited internal flexibility, but overall
  workflow is fairly well laid out
• coordinating organisation has a key role and
  mediates participation
• likely to involve a wide range of organisations
  from the research and business communities.
• in some cases, work more modular than
  collaborative.

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Networks of Excellence

• also large Instruments, but with much more
  internal flexibility
• primarily intended to combine and cross-fertilise
  existing strands of research around a common core
  issue.
• internal financing provides strong incentives for
  active and ongoing collaborative effort
• more likely to involve publicly-supported
  research organisations and to have less
  centralised or hierarchical structures

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Other instruments

• Specific Targeted Research Projects (STRePs) -
  suited to smaller consortia and more narrowly
  focused research within a fixed work-plan
• Coordinated Actions (CAs) and Specific Support
  Actions (SSAs) provide other forms of support or
  coordination to ongoing research efforts and
  areas of policy application in other Instruments.

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Instruments and organisation types
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Impact of IPs on specific actors
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Impact of NoEs on types of participant
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Long-term involvement in Framework Programmes
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Co-operation patterns

• Integrated Projects are likely to have private
  sector organisations as central to the network
• Networks of Excellence are centred around
  academic institutions
• Specific Targeted Research Projects combine
  academic and corporate central members.
• Source ERANET study for DG Infso by Rand Europe

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Share of FP funding by type of participant
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FP participations by participant type
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Conclusions

• IST is different, but patterns are clear
• New instruments resulted in much lower
  participation from smaller players
• Conflicting objectives between innovation/flexibil
  ity/critical mass/ scientific excellence/inclusivi
  ty
• Confusion over concepts of scale and integration
• Future developments