The Blueprint on Regional Innovation Benchmarking shows how to use benchmarking techniques to improve the innovation performance of regions or other geographical entities.
Benchmarking is understood as an improvement process in which a company, organisation or any other (multi-organisational) system carries out three processes:
1) compares its performance against best-in-class systems;
2) determines how these systems have achieved their superior
performance; and
3) uses the collected information to improve its own performance.
Contents
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 What is regional benchmarking? 5
1.2 Why engage in regional benchmarking? 8
1.3 Orientations of benchmarking (benchmarking of institutions, policies and regions) 9
CHAPTER 2. HOW TO PERFORM BENCHMARKING
2.1 Benchmarking: a project or an ongoing initiative? 11
2.2 Conditions required to initiate a benchmarking process 13
2.3 Overview of regional innovation benchmarking methodology 13
2.4 How to identify region-specific needs for innovation benchmarking 14
2.5 How to define the main benchmarking themes 19
2.6 How to select what indicators should be considered for each kind of benchmarking 19
2.7 How to create composite indicators for each benchmarking theme 20
2.8 How to select data collection method and collect relevant data 21
2.9 Primary and secondary data: What are the differences? 22
2.10 How to select those against whom to benchmark 22
2.11 First-level analysis: How to calculate benchmarking statistics 23
2.12 Second-level analysis: How to interpret the statistics, assess the current performance gap and define best practice 24
2.13 Information technology applications facilitating the benchmarking process 25
2.14 Parties involved in the benchmarking process 26
2.15 How to turn benchmarking insights into benchmarking-based action? 27
2.16 Integrating benchmarking with other innovation policy intelligence methods (foresight, innovation profiling etc.) 28
CHAPTER 3. GOOD PRACTICE
3.1 European Innovation Scoreboard 31
3.2 Massachusetts Innovation Economy Index 33
3.3 Region Lazio Innovation Scoreboard (RLIS) 35
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2006BlueprintRegionalInnovationBenchmarking.zip