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3.5. Type of Support—From Which Administrative/Policy Level In our cases, as shown in Table 4, institutional level support for innovations in NWFP was overwhelmingly provided by local-regional or national entities. On a local level, the support is sometimes given by local governments in singular measures (e.g., advisory support in ITTURP) or initiatives (regional marketing in ITMAR) or by regional public administrations on the county or district level (regional development support in the Finnish and several UK cases) or sectoral associations (e.g., in the Austrian cases). National sup- port usually comes under business development programmes which are partly centrally administered and are partly decentralized. EU support has been granted in most cases through the LEADER instrument for rural development which has a decentralized im- plementation structure. The importance of support from the local-regional level becomes particularly clear when adding up all programmes with decentralized administration: 23 out of 29 support measures in all our cases.
Table4. Administrative level of support programmes—level of policy formulation and implementation.
Level of Support Programme—Policy Implementation
Level of Support Programme—Policy Formulation
European Union
National
Local
1 0 0
0 5 0
5 5
(6)
European Union
(10) (13) (29)
National
13
Local
(1)
(5)
(23)
We furthermore indicated which kinds of support measures had a significant role in the innovation projects (INF, FIN, COO) (Figure 1). The provision of information and financial support has been reported as the most frequent support measures in our case studies whereby the interviewed representatives often especially emphasize the importance of information. Financial support was often rather small such as in the case of start-up grants or the contribution to smaller investments through rural development programmes. Such small grants are often described by the entrepreneurs as not crucial but extremely helpful for the further development of their businesses. All interviewed programme managers support the conclusion that such small grants, especially when given on the basis of a joint analysis of needs or as part of an integrated support package can be very effective. Networking was in most cases provided in a package with information and financial support through specialized regional or rural development agencies or other regional support structures or platforms. In addition to those measures that are often part of regular support programmes, we discovered another type of support—the adaptation of the framework (REG) which was crucial in one innovation case, the Italian turpentine collection. Institutional innovations such as the formation of an association are often of indirect influence [43] but in this case the policy change was part of the innovation project and had a direct impact. 4. Discussion The analysis of the presented innovation cases of NWFPs can help decision-makers take more informed decisions about the role of forests, and the forest-based sector in future (forest) bioeconomy strategies. As Giurca et al. [61] point out, many of European countries and their governments will engage in future in designing (or improving) national strategies to advance and strengthen their bioeconomy approaches. These bioeconomy strategies need to be based on the prerequisites of the country in focus [62], which are not orientated just on harvesting and use of timber products. In some countries, this means that many opportunities to expand to forest bioeconomy-related products and process will expand the forest sector and disciplines. Gorriz [24] illustrates that these interactions already take place in a more or less structured manner with agriculture, food industry, nature
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