Innovation support measures for SME: Facilitating transition from the traditional to the knowledge economy

A great number of innovation measures currently exist to directly or indirectly support innovation in Europe, including measures supporting technology transfer, incubation and access to finance. The INNO-Policy TrendChart currently identifies more than 400 horizontal and specific measures in support of innovation. These are intended to help organizations to innovate better and faster, by addressing specific market and system failures hindering European companies, in particular SMEs, from fully exploiting their innovation potential. However, in spite of the continuing importance of traditional manufacturing industries in the European economy, innovation support for SMEs in these industries has received little attention. Moreover, evaluation of innovation support measures is scarce and, where it does exist, often of poor quality. We conclude by introducing GPrix, which is a DG Research Framework 7 project designed to address these concerns.