Politiche per l’innovazione: dalla valutazione alla progettazione

Abstract

We discuss how the outcomes of policy evaluation processes can provide valuable feedback in order to design more effective policy interventions. We address our analysis to policies directed at promoting innovation by fostering generative relationships among heterogeneous organizations. The empirical background of our paper is a specific policy programme: the Regional Programme of Innovative Actions (PRAI-ITT) implemented in the Italian region of Tuscany in the period 2002-2004. Starting from our policy evaluation and monitoring exercise (Russo and Rossi, 2008), we generate practical guidelines for the design of a new intervention that builds upon the previous programme's strength and overcomes its weaknesses. These guidelines concern how to write a tender that is consistent with the policy's objectives, how to design appropriate tools for the ongoing monitoring of the programme and for its ex post evaluation; how to use network analysis tools in order to represent the interactions among the programme's participants; how to use ethnographic research in the construction of the relevant data and in the interpretation of the results. We discuss what kind of data are relevant for monitoring and evaluation purposes, and what indicators can be used for the evaluation of the individual networks and of the entire programme.Innovation policy; local development policies; regional development policies; evaluation management