The evaluation of the Investment for the Future Programme (PIA) Innovation Competition schemes (2010 – 2021) is now out
This report summarizes the results of a major piece of evaluation: the evaluation of the Investment for the Future Programme (PIA) Innovation Competition schemes (2010 – 2021) conducted in 2022 for Bpifrance, Ademe and FranceAgrimer. The evaluation spans across 8 different competition schemes, 1960 firms for an overall public budget of b1.09 EUR over the period.
The evaluation deployed mixed methods combining qualitative and quantitative analysis tools (in-depth literature review, econometric impact assessment, surveys, interviews, semantic analysis and sentimental analysis (competition jury’s comments), two policy-design workshops.
The analysis concludes that the innovation competition schemes are overall relevant to the PIA philosophy (accelerating innovation, risk-taking) and effective, that the competition scheme is successful in attracting the best-prepared firms that perform the best.
Recommendations for the innovation competition scheme as an instrument was i) to better position the competitions schemes according to the different needs of the French industrial policy, ii) to preserve the competition scheme features that allow for an acceleration of the innovation projects, iii) for the public operators, to better make use of the innovations produced by the winning firms, iv) to develop a monitoring tool at portfolio level to better follow the transformative impacts of the competition schemes (notably the social, environmental and climate-related impacts).
Reports and synthesis are available here.
