The contribution of the Framework Programmes to major innovations

This report presents the overall findings of the Study on Contribution of the Framework Programmes to Major Innovations (N° RTD-Major Innovations-2013-A5). The aim of the project is to evaluate the contribution of the European research programmes (FP5, FP6 and FP7) to the development of a selected number of Major Innovations. The focus of the study is on the identification of the key elements explaining the factors and conditions that brought the respective Major Innovation about, and the contribution of the EU funded research. The results of the study are targeted for supporting the policy evaluation and understanding of the areas for further improvement. The study has analysed different cases and their wider context in detail. The main conclusions drawn for the analysis can be summarised as follows: 1. Research and Development, although important, is one of many drivers for major innovations and despite the fact that the FP’s have not directly contributed to breakthroughs in the Major Innovations, they have significantly contributed to the relevant innovative capacity of firms, fostering the wider innovation environment (e.g. clusters and value chains), and to related incremental innovations. 2. Major Innovations usually consist of so-called families of innovations, which together are a necessary condition to make the innovation happen. Each of the innovation families has a different “ownership”, pace and timing to be mature enough to enter the market. (The recent extension to “closer to market” activities in Horizon 2020 offers opportunities for further synchronization). 3. The exploratory and excellence driven nature of FP5 to FP7 aimed at pre-competitive research (TRL 1-4), whereas 8 out of 10 Major Innovations passed TRL9. This implies that much of the results of the FP’s may contribute to the Major Innovations through networking, aligning agendas, knowledge creation and diffusion in relevant families of innovations and to understanding the more general framework conditions for an innovation.
4. Major Innovations strongly depend on a high impact of policies and regulations outside of the specific R&D&I domain (for instance the telecom liberalization, energy policies or the GPS Dual use policy). The FPs have helped to create conditions and potential pathways to leverage such policies into Major Innovations.