The Evaluation of 'Behavioural Additionality' - IWT

CHAPTER 3 > Conceptual and Empirical Challenges of Evaluating the Effectiveness of
Innovation Policies with ‘Behavioural Additionality’ .
IWT-STUDIES > >> 48
In this work international exchange of experience
with other research groups or agencies
is very valuable. To extend the empirical
base for common work a similar data collection
(similar survey questions) in different
countries is very useful.
International comparative work
Besides exchange of best practice in methodologies
and the construction of a common
empirical reference base, international comparative
work is very important to assess the
impact of different institutional set-ups in the
organisation of innovation stimulation.
Understanding the qualitative particularities
that can explain certain strengths and weaknesses,
in connection with quantitative
results, is a very important way of policy
learning.
In this process an international community
of practice is formed that can be an asset in
actual national evaluation exercises. A natural
extension of this cooperation could be
the set-up of an international peer-review
system of evaluators that is another complementary
element in the evaluation set-up.
Internalisation in existing evaluation
procedures
The organisation of an ex-post evaluation is
a cumbersome and costly exercise. It is
important to make sure that the results are
useful and used. The mandate for this kind
of exercise coming from the policy makers is
vital. The preparation and implementation
of the evaluation has to involve the management
and the advisors of IWT. They are
also an important source of information.
But the internalisation of this evaluation will
have two directions. First, enhance the
instruments and the organisation of the
interaction process with the ‘clients’ in a
more system-aware sense. Second, include
new indicators for the evaluation of behavioural
additionality as part of the existing
evaluation procedures. This material will
feed-in in the evaluation methods above
described and increase the learning capacity
of the IWT and the policy makers.
69