Collaboration in Eco-Innovation Research in the European Union

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1 Collaboration in Eco-Innovation Research in the European Union Eco-innovation brief #14 15 December 2012 Lorena Rivera León, Technopolis Group Eco-innovation has become one of the most expanding sectors in the last years, as well as a policy priority for the EU. This brief makes use of Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques to understand the formation of social networks that the EU Framework Programmes for RTD (FP6 and FP7) have contributed to form between the different EU and extra-european institutions involved in eco-innovation projects. Image source: EC, research*eu results magazine, N14 An eco-innovation research network is understood here as a partnership projection that links research institutions that are involved in the same eco-innovation project directly to each other, or indirectly through research partners that they have in common. The criteria used for the selection of keywords was based on a series of keywords related to the most used definitions of eco-innovation in relation to innovation in general, resource efficiency and productivity, environmental technologies and environmental performance, and the presence of these keywords in the External Common Research Data Warehouse (E-CORDA) database of FP projects, either on the title of the project or in the project s abstract. Eco-innovation research projects in FP FP6 FP7 Total Number of projects Total number of organisations Average organisations per 12,69 10,40 11,55 project Average projects per organisation 1,10 1,26 1,18 Number of links Giant component 243(60%) 1069(64.67%)

2 Social Network Analysis (SNA) for evaluating research collaboration Differently from input or output assessments that are often applied by governmental institutions to evaluate the effectiveness of their policies, SNA allows to understand the social capital and the relational structure which are at the base of knowledge production, knowledge transmission and knowledge diffusion of the actors involved. Research funding in support of eco-innovation is on the rise. The European Union has been increasing considerably the available funds for eco-innovation research through FP. Following E-CORDA data, eco-innovation projects equalled a total of 76m EC financial contributions in FP6, and more than 635m in FP7, registering an increase of 736% within only a few years. Moreover, eco-innovation research in FP7 has been strongly promoted at a more horizontal level, spamming across different work programmes such as Energy; Nanoproduction; Food, Agriculture and Fisheries and Biotechnology; and Environment. Moreover, about 20 different calls for proposals in FP6 and 61 in FP7 were related to eco-innovation. The number of participating institutions on eco-innovation research is also increasing The number of projects and participants in eco-innovation research projects has also increased. There were a total of 35 eco-innovation projects funded in the FP6 and 202 in the FP7, involving 405 and 1,653 different participants respectively. Eco-innovation is present across different policy priority areas of the EU Eco-innovation projects are distributed in a rather horizontal way in FP6, with the calls with the most projects only having a maximum of 4, and being the most important: Horizontal Research Activities involving SMEs; Scientific support to policies including areas such as sustainable management, sustainable agriculture, environmental assessment, the impact of environmental issues on health, etc.-; and Sustainable Development, global change and ecosystems In FP7 there were only three calls for proposals that financed more than 10 eco-innovation related research projects: Information and Communication Technologies (15 projects in the 2007 call, and 14 in the 2009 call), and Sustainable surface transport (11 projects). 2

3 Main trends in eco-innovation EU-funded research Membership to eco-innovation research networks is a not a frequent event for the majority of FP participants. The average number of FP projects in which eco-innovation research organisations participate is of only Thus, most of the organisations have been occasional participants to FP, in the sense that they have only joined one project. However, this can also show that there are only a few funding opportunities for eco-innovation in FP and/ or that there are only a few players with rather concrete levels of expertise cooperating in projects. All FP participants have close ties. The largest components of research networks in both FPs or the largest connected sub-network in relation to the total number of participants- fill a large proportion of the full research network: 60% in FP6 and 65% in FP7. This shows that most organisations involved are, directly or indirectly, connected to each other via research collaboration. There might be some intrinsic reasons inherent to the sector behind these close ties. For instance, the green-tech sector, however horizontal in nature, is highly specialised; therefore, firms and research institutions working on eco-innovation are likely to present stronger cognitive proximity that, in turn, facilitates knowledge exchange. Further, institutions dealing with eco-innovation are likely to share more conscientious values about environmental issues, which can translate into a closer institutional proximity, favouring knowledge sharing. Eco-innovation FP participants are highly concentrated geographically. Only six countries concentrate more than 50% of all eco-innovation participants in FP, with only two countries having a participation share greater than 10%: Germany and Italy. The top ranking shares do not vary between both FPs, in ranking order being Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and France. Country participation shares in eco-innovation projects, FP6 vs. FP7 Rank Country FP6 FP7 1 Germany 16% 15% 2 Italy 10% 10% 3 United Kingdom 9% 9% 4 France 7% 8% 5 Spain 6% 7% 6 Netherlands 7% 6% Sweden 3% 4% 7 Belgium 3% 4% Finland 2% 4% Greece 4% 3% 8 Austria 4% 3% Denmark 5% 3% Norway 1% 2% 9 Switzerland 2% 2% Poland 2% 2% Hungary 2% 2% Ireland 1% 1% Portugal 2% 1% Romania 1% 1% Slovenia 2% 1% 10 Czech Republic 3% 1% Bulgaria 2% 1% Croatia 0% 1% Lithuania 0% 1% India 0% 1% The financial cost of eco-innovation projects and the EC s contributions to projects have also increased. Not only the average contract eligible costs of eco-innovation projects increased by 25% between FP6 and FP7, but also the average EC financial contribution grew more than proportionally that the total cost of projects almost by 60%. Only a few key-central actors dominate eco-innovation research networks in the EU The FP6 and FP7 networks presented below show the most central actors pertaining to the main components in eco-innovation research, and that participated in more than one FP project, based on an indicator of network centrality (betweenness centrality). The higher the value of their centrality indicator, the most important the participant is in relation to holding the network together. The participants in yellow are the most central, whereas the ones in blue are the top ranked 2 nd and 3 rd. 3 Europe in transition: Paving the way to a green economy through eco-innovation

4 Most central actors in FP6 eco-innovation research projects Most central actors in FP7 eco-innovation research projects 4

5 Network dynamism, openness and leverage capacity of eco-innovation research networks There is a small core of highly central eco-innovation participants that remains rather stable between FP6 and FP7. There are only 31 participants that were part of both FP6 and FP7 networks. This represents only about 1.5% of the total population of eco-innovation participants in both FPs of a total of 2,058. Interestingly, on average, each of the participants to both FPs received more than 1.2m of total financial contributions from the EC, which is more than two times (231%) than an average participant in FP7. There are only three participants that are top-10 ranked based on their network centrality scores-: the German research centre Fraunhofer Institut, the Dutch research centre TNO, and the Finnish research centre VTT. This shows that there are only a few participants that are knowledge hubs for eco-innovation research in the EU. Moreover, this confirms the openness of the network, as the number of participants increasing from 405 in FP6 to 1,653 in FP7- and centrality characteristics in both FPs changes considerably between both periods. Based on two network centrality statistics (i.e. the degree centrality scores and closeness centrality), the results show that centrality in eco-innovation research projects in FP6, matters and influences positively the chances of a participant in leveraging EC funds in FP7 (the computed correlation values were of 0.08 for degree/fp7 EC funds received, and of 0.30 for closeness centrality). This might be tightly linked to issues of reputation in the network, but can also reflect the fact that experienced participants on EU funding application procedures in a given period-1, have lower barriers to network-entry and hence to leverage funds in period-2. More interestingly, the correlation values (higher for closeness centrality) suggest that it is not only important to a participant to be linked to many other participants, but it is even better to be linked to many other participants that are well connected too -or linked to many other participants themselves. 5 Europe in transition: Paving the way to a green economy through eco-innovation

6 Key findings There are a few key central actors in EU eco-innovation research, which serve as connectors to other participants involved in the FPs. Moreover, more than 60% of eco-innovation researchers in FP are closely linked to each other via research collaboration. Both FP6 and FP7 networks see the emergence of main hubs with extremely high degree centrality scores and a great majority of weakly connected actors; policies aiming at increasing the links between central participants and more w participants may prove to be beneficial in fostering knowledge diffusion. Research networks across time are open to new actors, even though a small core of highly central actors remains rather stable between FP6 and FP7. There is a positive correlation between the levels of centrality of an actor in the research networks in FP6 or the influence of the participant with regards to knowledge flows and research outcomes-, and the funds rose by the participants in FP7. Further information Contact Lorena Rivera León, Technopolis Group at lorena.rivera.leon@technopolis-group.com The EIO database can be used to develop personalised charts and figures; visit Further EIO products (Eco-Innovation Scoreboard, Country reports, etc.) are freely available at