France - Allemagne - Comment promouvoir la cooperation industrielle entre les PME? Evaluation de deux programmes d'action visant la promotion du transfert de technologie entre PME francaises et allemandes par l'utilisation de conseillers en innovation

The report deals with two support programmes, which aim at the promotion of international technology transfer between European SMEs. To this end, some networks of innovation counsellors were established in order to promote industrial cooperation. As the analysed programmes were factly financed by public institutions, evaluation surveys took place. The main result of the evaluation pinpoints the lack of impact of these programmes on industrial companies and the affectance of interesting spin-offs. Many reasons are mentioned to explain this lack of success, in particular the lack on information on behaviour and needs of industry as far as technology transfer is concerned, which could have been avoided by conducting an ex ante strategic evaluation.