Innovation and eBusiness Projects

Since January 2002, empirica co-ordinates the "e-Business W@tch" initiative of the European Commission, Enterprise & Industry Direcatorate General. e-Business W@tch has studied the adoption and impact of ICT and e-business in more than 20 sectors of the European economy. The analysis is based on annual representative surveys among with decision makers in about 10,000 enterprises from all EU countries and beyond, on case studies and expert interviews. Special emphasis is placed on the implications for SMEs. The initiative was launched by the European Commission, DG Enterprise and Industry, in late 2001. It is based on a framework contract which lasts until December 2010.

The objective of this study is to assess the relevance, implementation and results of the EU initiative on "Stimulating innovation for European enterprises through smart use of ICT". This initiative, managed by the European Commission's "e-Business Support Network" (eBSN), was launched in 2007 in response to the challenge that there are still significant inefficiencies in the value chain management of most sectors of the economy, in spite of the technological progress of the underlying technologies. The initiative aimed to promote the integration of SMEs in digital value chains by encouraging stakeholders to agree on a common framework architecture for e-business and to test this architecture in pilot projects. The evaluation study assesses the effectiveness of this approach and makes recommendations for future policy in this domain. Evidence is collected through personal interviews with project participants and domain experts and an online survey among stakeholders.

INNO-GRIPS supports evidence-based innovation policy by enhancing the understanding of key barriers to product and service innovation in companies. An important aspect of such barriers is the socio-economic environment. INNO-GRIPS also enhances the understanding of the effectiveness of existing policies that seek to reduce such barriers and to stimulate innovation drivers.
Towards this end, INNO-GRIPS produces the following outputs:

• Policy Briefs on specific topics of innovation policy.
• Newsletters covering general topics of innovation policy.
• Workshops to discuss current innovation policy topics.

Learning from each other: The e-Business Support Network (e-BSN) of the European Commission is a portal and network for policy makers in the field of electronic business. Representatives of all EU Member States participate in the e-BSN to exchange their experiences, to identify successful examples of implementing e-business policies, and to make these examples available to other European regions.
In order to support these objectives, the European Commission has issued a detailed impact study on 10 e-business policies. The polices were selected by the e-BSN.
The study is being carried out by Databank Consulting (Milan) in cooperation with empirica GmbH und IDATE (Montpellier).