Policy, Innovation, Design
This past week I attended the first of four thematic workshops as part of the Sharing Experience Europe (SEE) Interreg IVC project. Ireland is one of eleven European partners as well as one of five members of the Policy Recommendation Research Group. After each of the four thematic workshops, a research group partner is responsible for the publication of policy recommendations to be distributed to policy makers and governments. The first will be out in September on “integrating creativity and design into regional innovation policy.”
The first day in Lyon featured guest speakers from several countries, including Greg Coyle of the Applied Innovation Group of Enterprise Ireland. On the second day everyone got down to serious work as each of the eleven partners presented “pecha kucha” presentations on the state of design and innovation policy in their own countries (Ireland, PPT, 1.14MB). This led to a mapping exercise of current activities. We then turned our attention to identifying the opportunities and barriers of integrating creativity and design into regional innovation policy, both from the standpoint of design support bodies and policy makers.
One of the unique features of the SEE project, is each partner is encouraged to bring a policy maker to participate in the workshops. This will continue through the length of the programme.
We ended the second day by drawing a collective response to the EU public consultation on “Design as a driver of user-centred innovation.” The consultation is still accepting replies from both individuals and organisations until the end of this week, Friday, June 26. Do take the time to respond. By putting an EU recommendation in place, Member States will have an obligation to consider the role of design in not only innovation policy, but stand-alone design policy, or integration into other EU policy directives.
I’m a self-admitted policy skeptic; much more interested in action-based programmes. However, we are taking a user-centred approach in including policy makers in the workshops, as well as doing research on how to draft effective recommendations for our target-audience as outcomes.
