Evaluation 'Innovative Regional Growth Cores'

The funding initiative 'Innovative Regional Growth Cores' is part of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) Innovation Initiative for the New States 'Unternehmen Region'. Since the programme was launched in 2001, 997 sub-projects in 48 growth cores have been funded. The aim of the programme is to tap endogenous innovation potentials of a region and to initiate the development of sustainable technology platforms on this basis. The task of the evaluation is to analyze the achievement of the program's objectives with regard to economic effects and the viability of the funded technology and problem-solving platforms. In addition, the evaluation focuses on the programme's effects, in particular the importance of the upstream strategy process for selecting and profiling the growth cores. A further focus is the classification of the program in the funding context and the evaluation of the model character of the funding initiative for future region-oriented innovation funding.