METHODOLOGICAL DEBATE ON THE ‘REGIONAL INNOVATION SCOREBOARD’.
METHODOLOGICAL DEBATE ON THE ‘REGIONAL INNOVATION SCOREBOARD’.
In this case, one instrument equivalent to the RIS is the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Another example could be the assessment of socioeconomic well-being through the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). Including the mul - tiple perspectives (i.e. glasses) considered in this report would allow each territory to ana- lyse the performance of the item under study (education, development, health, etc.) from a much more comprehensive, multidimensional approach. This project may therefore represent an excellent opportunity to extend the meth- odologies applied in it to any other field that involves evaluating public policies. Readers of this document may ask: Why is it necessary to characterise and measure innova- tion? And what is the added value of offering a more comprehensive view of the synthetic indi- ces, with a view to assessing innovation? Apart from its socioeconomic importance, measure- ment is intended to help public administrators engaged in formulating innovation policy by identifying specific aspects of the system that work well or require public intervention (Arun- del and Hollanders, 2008). Comparing the level shown by a series of territories (in the context of this report, European regions) within a wide range of indicators allows their relative per- formance to be analysed in comparison with the territories considered, giving us a picture of the good (or bad) health of a given system compared to the rest. However, the literature clearly shows that the methodology followed in drafting these synthetic indices has a direct impact on their conclusions (Paruolo et al., 2013). Even though, given their imperfections and biases, the use of synthetic indicators as policy formulation instruments should be re-evaluated, the fact is that most territories define their innovation policies according to their relative position in the rankings offered by entities such as the European Commission. One need only see how politicians benefiting from these reports boast to the media of their relative improvement when they are published (generally in June each year), while those that
are penalised by the methodology followed in drafting the synthetic index remain silent.
This report aims to provide a multidimensional view of innovation, so as to better characterise the strengths and weaknesses of each regional innovation system, leading to a comprehen- sive, holistic understanding of its performance and dynamics. We therefore hope that the report's conclusions, as extracted from the analysis carried out in this report, can help give innovation policy administrators direction, allowing them to make more efficient, effective resource allocation decisions and ensure more consolidated, dynamic, competitive innovation systems. The study has addressed three different analy- sis perspectives, as summarised in Table 14: (I) change in relative weights; (II ) efficiency of the innovating activity; and (III) analysis of possible bottlenecks. This final chapter summarises the main conclusions of these perspectives, identifying the main public intervention areas that would need to be addressed in order to improve the performance of each regional innovation system in Spain. Annex IV includes a summary of each of the Spanish regions, briefly outlining the most representative char- acteristics of their respective regional innova- tion systems.
The purpose of this report is to contribute to the debate on the methodology used in developing synthetic indices This report focuses on the methodological debates around the Regional In- novation Scoreboard (RIS), one of the main instruments used by the European Commission to as- sess innovation performance of European regions. However, its conclusions could also be ex- trapolated to other areas where synthetic indices are used ex- tensively, e.g. education, where multiple indicators are used to evaluate the performance of edu- cation systems.
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