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Posts Tagged ‘European Commission’

R&D Investment and Performance around the world – a European Commision report

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

The Science, Technology and Competitiveness key figures report 2008/2009, released by the European Commission, presents a thorough analysis and overview of the evolution of R&D investment and performance in Europe. The report is considered an attempt to monitor the progress and efficiency of implementing performance measures by the European research system.

Research is considered a key competitive asset in a global world as science, technology and patent applications are more widely distributed every year. Between 2000 and 2006 the investment in R&D increased in Europe by 14,8%, comparable with the US and Japan, where figures show a growth of 10.1 % and 21.9 % respectively.

Source: European Commission, 2008

The analysis of the participation shares in global R&D indicates that almost 80 % of researchers work outside the EU, 75 % of gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) is executed in other world regions, and 69 % of patent applications are made outside the EU. This indicates a declining world share of GERD and patent applications, both for the US and for the European Union (European Commission, 2008).

Source: European Commission, 2008

The main conclusions of the report are:

Despite encouraging progress on increasing the amount of investment in R&D, the R&D intensity of EU-27 has remained unchanged, as countries with increasing R&D intensities do not have very high shares of EU-27 GDP.
Higher returns for private investment in R&D favor structural change, such as high-growth SMEs and higher demand and a single market for research-intensive products (European Commission, 2008).
European Research Area (ERA) integration is a key competitive factor for increasing the effectiveness of the European research system, due to its cost-effectiveness and framework conditions attractiveness.

The Key Performance Indicators used within this report are:

% R&D intensity (GERD as a % of GDP)
% Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD – % Real Growth)
# Patents applications
# Researchers

For further examples of performance indicators, explore the R&D KPI examples section of the library of KPI examples available on smartkpis.com (smartKPIs.com, 2010).

References:

European Commission (2008), The Science, Technology and Competitiveness key figures report 2008/2009, available at http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/pdf/key-figures-report2008-2009_en.pdf (accessed 1 July 2010).

smartKPIs.com (2010), R&D KPI examples, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/knowledge-and-innovation/r-d/ (accessed 1 July 2010).

Tags: European Commission, Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD), R&D Expenditure, R&D investment, research, Technology and Competitiveness key figures report 2008/2009
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Performance Management history file – Global Performance Management for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

The specific needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been addressed by various initiatives in diverse areas of organizational management and development, including the context of performance management and measurement.

Such an initiative represents the project entitled Global Performance Management for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (GPM-SME), financed by the 6th Framework Program (FP 6) of the European Commission, the Co-operative research (CRAFT) scheme between 2002-2006.

As shown by the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS), the Framework Program is the largest EU instrument for the funding of research and considering the major importance of SMEs in the Union’s economy (seen as the most innovative, flexible and dynamic enterprises and accounting for a great amount of the existing jobs), it’s no wonder that one of the Program’s schemes – the CRAFT scheme mentioned above – is dedicated exclusively to SMEs (CORDIS, 2010).

The GPM-SME project was launched by a transnational consortium of R&D centres, industrial companies, software developers, consulting firms and standardization organizations (Alba et al., 2005):

Source: Alba et al., 2005

The goal was to develop a new framework called the Global Performance Management (GPM) for SMEs, combining two performance management approaches: Extended Performance Management (ExPM) and Enriched Performance Management. The first approach aims at creating collaborative performance management instruments at all levels (internal, external and network), in the context of what is called an evolution of businesses from single enterprises to Collaborative Networks (CN) and Virtual Organizations (VO). The second approach enriches the traditional Balanced Scorecard approach to measuring performance with additional dimensions, such as Innovation and Agility, Environmental Care and Corporate Social Responsibility (Alba et al., 2005).

The project consisted of a two-stages approach (Alba et al., 2005):

Analysis of the problem and identification of solutions based on user requirements collected;
Development of a set of ready-to-use instruments for the implementation of GPM in SMEs, such as:

A methodology and SME-oriented architecture to help SMEs define and operate a real model of the GPM solution;
A free of cost IT toolset that bridges the conceptual and practical environment;
A tutorial for broad dissemination of results on a cross-sectorial basis.

Out of the toolset helping managers translate their strategy into operational objectives, the GPM Dashboard represents a repository with all the KPIs, allowing visualization of the information and analysis, which correlated to the GPM Strategy Observer, shows deviations and pushes warnings to the managers. Other toolset products are the GPM Simulation of Innovation Scenario, GPM Innovation Potential Scorecard and the GPM Best Practices Monitor.

The project was based on two industries – automotive and consumer goods – which were considered to be the global best practices in terms of upstream value chain optimization, respectively downstream value chain optimization. But the purpose was to expand the lessons learned in these two sectors so as to deliver valuable results with a broad range of applicability.

While the GPM-SME project is now closed, it represents an interesting example of a collaborative approach in developing new approaches and instruments for Performance Management as a discipline.

References:

CORDIS (2010), „Specific projects for SMEs”, available at: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp6/instr_sme.htm (accessed 1 May 2010).

Alba, M., Diez, L., Olmos, E. and Rodrigues, R. (2005), “Global Performance Management for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (GPM-SME)”, available at: http://www.everis.es/Images/GPMArt_tcm31-4575.pdf (accessed 1 May 2010).

Tags: 6th Framework Project, CRAFT, Dashboard, Enriched Performance Management, European Commission, Extended Performance Management, Global Performance Management, Scorecard, SMEs
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