Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

earmarked budgets, customer pools, job descriptions and operation modes. In
most extreme cases, and without proper input from the outside, the old structures
determine the new ones. This is why services set up in Eastern Europe, for example,
may have a benefit over the ones in old EU countries – they simply do not need to
cope with legacy structures. Adding to the problem is also the often visible way of
decision making, involving changing sets of actors and/or the pervasiveness of
subjective views on a subject – the end result might be a “garbage can” of IPR
support services, which looks chaotic from the outside and which has evolved into
its state by chance rather than by rational decision making. 14
Graph 9 shows the activities which were carried out for the preparation of
the launch of the support services scrutinised in the benchmarking process. It can
be easily seen that user need exploration (used in 67 % of the benchmarked
services) and the involvement of stakeholders (which took place in 52 % of the
investigated services, and even more with the case study services (59 %))
accompany for the most part the introduction of IPR services. Disappointingly, only
17 % of the benchmarked services had formal and thorough ex-ante assessments
conducted; only about a fifth of the services used foresight exercises. The level of
involvement of external consultations lies at about 32% for the benchmarked
services. This share is higher for the case study services of phase 3 (41 %). About
13 % of the benchmarked services had no analysable preparatory activities. More
than 54 % of the benchmarked services and 65 % of the case study services had
“other” action taken in order to set up the service.
Taken together, these results suggest that the design phase differed a lot among
the services analysed, and that – most likely – it deviated in many instances also
considerably from the ideal policy cycle model. This seems not only to be
corroborated by the low share of ex-ante exercises conducted, but also by the
rather considerable share of services for which no preparatory action has been
taken. Furthermore, the variety of paths taken to design services within the group
of “other preparatory” activities partly supports the argument that the existence of
services in their particular operation modes is only to an extent the result of a
thoroughly planned process: Mentioned activities range from “direct governmental
Graph 9 Type of preparatory activities conducted for setting up the services
investigated, percentage of services
%
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
21
12
Foresight
exercises
67
User need
exploration
59 59
52
Stakeholder
involvement
32
External consultants
involvement
Formal ex-ante
assessments
Other
activities
No preparation
activities
14 The garbage can model developed by Cohen, March & Olsen in 1972, offers a description of how decision making
processes are handled in organisations: Decisions are mainly taken against the backdrop of problematic and
subjective preferences (which become only clearer within the process), the lack of knowledge of organisational
regulations and structures governing the decision making process and fluid participation, meaning that acting people
and decision makers change constantly and certain subjects are discussed repeatedly on and on. Problems, solutions,
acting persons and opportunities to reach decisions are independent flowing dimensions which create a context
where the decisions taken are not the result of rational thoughts, but stem from the interaction of the mentioned
dimensions. The resulting situation is a rather chaotic one (i.e., a garbage can), where the choice of solutions applied
to problems is more likely due to chance (Cohen et al., 1972) than to rational thinking.
41
17
benchmarked services case study services
Source: Benchmarking process, n (benchmarked services) = 66, n (case study services) = 15
18
54
65
13
12
61
TOWARDS GOOD PRACTICES – THE REAL WORLD OF IPR SUPPORT SERVICES