Innovation Promotion: Good Marks for the CTI
The CTI's funding instruments work - but they still need to become better known: This is shown by two evaluations and impact analyses on innovation promotion.
Research institutions, companies, and start-ups place great importance on the work of the Commission for Technology and Innovation CTI largely a good report card: Their work is target-oriented and unbureaucratic, the R&D instruments are coordinated and the coaching is useful. One criticism is that the CTI's services are still too little known. These are the results of two external evaluations and impact analyses on innovation promotion commissioned by the CTI.
The external evaluation attests to the CTI's coherent set of coordinated instruments in the area of R&D project funding, with which both science- and market-driven innovation projects are promoted. The project partners also rate positively the lean and unbureaucratic structure with short processing times and the expertise from the market and science. According to the evaluation, satisfaction with the implementation is high among both the research partners and the business partners, and slightly higher among the former. The evaluators see potential in the awareness of the CTI: 55 percent of industrial companies with more than 20 employees are not aware of the CTI.
One third more employees and exports
The surveys of the business partners provide evidence of the strengthening of competitiveness through CTI-funded projects. The companies state that the CTI projects support them above all in accelerating market introduction and generating a higher market share. SMEs involved in CTI projects also make significantly more R&D expenditures and higher investments than comparable companies that did not receive funding. According to their own statements, companies supported by the CTI improve their sales in the area of the supported projects by around 50 percent and have around a third more employees and exports there.
From the perspective of the research partners, the main benefits are networking with business partners and strengthening research activities. CTI funding also strengthens the next generation of scientists through new hires.
80 percent of startups with label are still on the market
The implementation of coaching for start-ups is also judged to be transparent and goal-oriented. 80 percent of the start-ups rate the coaching as useful. The target group of science-based start-ups is reached: more than half are spin-offs from universities. However, according to the survey, awareness of the coaching could still be increased: a quarter of the start-ups surveyed in a control group were not aware of the CTI offer. In terms of the effects of coaching, positive effects are evident: Among the start-ups awarded the CTI label between 2005 and 2009, the survival rate is 80 percent. The 300 start-ups that received coaching in the same period created around 1350 full-time positions by 2016. Around 15 percent of the CTI start-ups are fast-growing start-ups.
Three external evaluations in three areas
The CTI has the legal mandate to account for its funding activities and to provide information on the economic effects. For this reason, in October 2015 it commissioned three external evaluations and impact analyses in the areas of R&D project funding, coaching of start-up funding and promotion of entrepreneurship. The contracts were awarded to three consortia. The first two reports with recommendations to the CTI are now available, and the report on the promotion of entrepreneurship will be published in summer 2017. In 2018, follow-up reports with updated results over a longer period of time will be published.
For its part, the Swiss Federal Audit Office SFAO conducts selected qualitative case studies on CTI R&D project funding in parallel with the impact analyses.
The CTI has issued statements on the two final reports and the recommendations contained therein, in which it shows how the findings are to be classified and which measures - also for Innosuisse, which will become operational as of 1.1.2018 - are now derived from them. The final reports and statements are available for download here: www.kti.admin.ch/wirkungsanalyse.
Text: CTI
