Over the years I have engaged in various activities to transfer knowledge to, and interact with, policy.
Together with Michele Cincera (ULB), I wrote the Research and Innovation Observatory Country Report for Belgium for 2019 (RIO/JRC, European Commission), on its science & innovation policy. The report served as input for the European Semester. I have also written the RIO country reports for Belgium in preceding years (2015-2018), which involved workshops at the premises of JRC in Brussels. As an example of how these reports tie into other policy work, one of the challenges for Belgian innovation policy I put forward in the 2017 report, was picked up in a recent policy advice of VARIO (Flemish Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship) on innovative high-growth firms and recently presented at the conference of the 2019-2024 VARIO memorandum.
In 2018, I wrote reports for the European Commission on entrepreneurial universities and smart specialization and was involved in a case study of the KU Leuven to apply the Regional Innovation Impact Assessment Framework for universities (RI²A), joint with Wim Fyen of LRD, which will be published as a book chapter in 2020.
In 2019, I did a TAIEX SRSP Expert Mission in Rome for the European Commission for Invitalia (the Italian innovation agency) and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. I gave a presentation on questions they had formulated in advance with respect to the development of a new policy on the absorption of highly skilled individuals into the Italian labor market. This was a follow-up of another TAIEX mission, also for Invitalia and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development in 2018. Here I presented own research and gave an overview on methods of counterfactual impact assessment of public innovation support, as input for new innovation policies in Italy.
In 2010-2015, I was a member of the Expert Group on Indicators & Budget (EGIB) of the Flemish Council for Science & Innovation (VRWI). Besides the regular meetings of the EGIB-group, I also participated in additional initiatives taken by the EGIB, such as the working group on benchmarking Flemish innovation performance against other regions/countries in 2011, or the focus group on assessing the alignment between knowledge creation and application in Flanders in 2013.
I co-organized a 3-day executive course for the Flemish Advisory Council for Innovation & Enterprise (VARIO) in 2019. It covered important topics in innovation and entrepreneurship, as a training for VARIO’s team of policy advisors.
In 2009-2012, I participated in the “Monitoring of Markets and Sectors”-project (AGORA/Belspo) for the Ministry of Economic Affairs, joint with KU Leuven colleagues. In 2009-2010, I was a member of the “Scoreboard working group” of the Council for Science Policy of the Brussels Capital Region.
For the European Commission, I acted as an expert in the peer review exercise of Belgian RDI policy in 2011.