ServPPIN. The Contribution of Public and Private Services to European Growth and Welfare, and the Role of Public-Private Innovation Networks. Servppin Final Publishable Summary Report

ServPPIN is a research project focusing on the role of public and private services in growth and welfare and the particular role of public-private innovation networks (PPINs). Service public-private innovation networks (ServPPINs) are a new phenomenon across the EU. These collaborative alliances between public and private sector organisations bring together and develop complementarities and synergies between the different types of knowledge, technologies, competences, and services that each partner specialises in. The main objectives of the project were to identify the linkages between services, economic and social growth, and to understand the contribution of service innovations in the current economy and society, as well as any differences that may exist between the public and private sectors. This requires an understanding how public-private sector interactions function in the context of services, and how they can be better managed by private and public sector policy-makers to increase performance and welfare. It also requires an understanding of the characteristics of public-private service networks that induce innovation, and therefore growth, employment and welfare. The theoretical and empirical fieldwork has involved cross-country and cross-sector empirical analysis. To define the service innovation and service public-private innovation networks concept, and to guide the interface between theory and empirical research, the project has developed an analytical framework for studying multiinstitutional networks. The empirical research has followed a three-pronged approach at macro-, meso- and micro- economic levels including case studies covering the major service sectors of health, transport, tourism and knowledge intensive services. The key findings of the project are: 1. Services are essential sources for growth which provide new value-added . There are different patterns of services development across the enlarged EU, and the variety of service economies models are embedded in diverse social and institutional models in Europe. 2. Service innovation is a way to improve both competitiveness and welfare. Europe shows both innovation gaps and performance gaps that cannot be addressed through the use of technological innovation only: non-technological innovation, organisational innovation and open and social innovation are also essential modes of innovation. 3. ServPPINs provide an opportunity to improve innovation in services, both economic and social innovation. Policy intervention may increase the contribution of ServPPINs to growth and welfare in the following way: i) by strengthening service-specific innovation and innovation capabilities of firms, users and other agents; ii) by facilitating co-operation and networks involving service and social innovation; iii) by empowering the public sector and the third sector for co-operation. 4. ServPPINs represent a new mode of creating innovative types of services that otherwise would not be possible in the context of New Public Management approaches that have come to dominate the public sector in recent years. A key set of policy implications follow: ServPPINs can be promoted through a mix of existing R&D policies, innovation policies, public procurement, regional policies, competition policies and employment & skills policies, among others. But these need to be reoriented to facilitate the creation and the growth of ServPPINs.