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Competence Poles and Light Structures are bottom-up initiatives of companies united in a Flemish collaborative association (VIS). Their aim is to strengthen the competitive position of the Flemish business community by focusing on knowledge development and knowledge transfer. The central concept here is open innovation: innovation is achieved through collaboration and interaction between companies and knowledge institutions, with the objective of reaching as large a group of companies as possible, particularly SMEs. Since 2000, a total of about 19 Competence Poles and Light Structures have been initiated and funded by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) for a clearly coordinated program of activities.
Due to the initiatives starting at different times in recent years, a comprehensive evaluation has not yet been carried out. Furthermore, the initiatives differ in terms of activities, target audience, scale, etc. This makes it undesirable to compare the effectiveness among different results. Therefore, the IWT has requested that research firm Dialogic evaluate the mechanism of Competence Poles and Light Structures now and create a typology of the operating models of the initiatives.
Dialogic conducted the analysis using desk research and interviewed 39 directly involved parties such as managers of Competence Poles and Light Structures, members of the Boards of Directors, policy officers, intermediaries, partners, and affiliated companies.
