Impact Assessment ans Evaluation Tools

This handbook provides tools for evaluation / impact assessment of any project/initiative involving interactive innovation

The main risk factors for rural innovation in Europe: an analysis of 200 case studies

Purpose – European rural development programmes are driving multi-actor interactive innovation initiatives and alliances to create an environment in which innovation acts as a tool for accelerating rural development processes. In Europe where rural areas are facing many challenges, identifying which challenges, difficulties, obstacles, or risk factors that interactive innovation projects have had to face in rural areas while being planned and set up would be interesting. The objective of this research work was to, therefore, identify and analyse the risk factors of 200 rural projects and initiatives that were selected as case studies from the whole of Europe. Design/methodology/approach – The employed methodology consisted in conducting interviews to subsequently perform statistical independence analyses of the qualitative variables characterising the found projects and risk factors. Findings – The findings indicated that most of the risks that rural projects and initiatives faced were related to the social domain which was, in turn, the fundamental pillar of interactive innovation. Dependence was found between social risk factors appearing and the innovation type carried out; the risk factors corresponding to the political-legal risks category and the project or initiative coordinating country; the economic-technical risks category and the initiatives’ geographic magnitude. Keywords: rural development, interactive innovation, risk management, multi-actor approach. Paper type: Research pape

Interactive Innovation: Network analysis tool for practitioners

The network tool is used to: • Identify crucial actors that shape the network and/or boost the innovation • Identify actors that negatively affect the actors and/ or undermine the innovation • Monitor the way the network develop and adapt the strategy/activities accordingly The idea is to evaluate interactive innovation projects in terms of the role of actors’ interactivity in relation to decision-making on the innovation process (through information or knowledge exchange, and joint or cooperative research). This can be for example about the role of an actor that entered in the course of the process and that strengthened the innovation through establishing suitable connections with other actors, leading to a better decision-making process on the innovation. The analysis of the network of actors can be made at one point of time only, or at 2 or 3 consecutive periods of time. We recommend the latter as it allows us to see the evolution of the network of actors over time. The evaluation can be done in quasi real time, but also in an ex-post manner. An ex-post assessment means that the evaluator will reconstruct the network as it was at the period of interest. In terms of data source, three options are possible: • The evaluator makes its own estimation of relationship level between the actors; • The evaluator involve key actors to estimate the levels of relationships; or • He/she asks the actors involved in the network, what their levels of relationships with the other actors are. In this case, bilateral exchanges are generally recommended. However, if actors feel or would feel comfortable to discuss this together, for example in case there is no major power asymmetries or conflicts between actors, a workshop could also be performed