Project Overview
MIRIAD is a partnership project set up with funding from the Framework 6 Programme of the European Commission under the Regions of Knowledge 2 Programme. MIRIAD began in January 2006 and will end in December 2007. The objective of MIRIAD is to stimulate policy intervention focused on raising levels of R&D investment in four regions across Europe:
Yorkshire and the Humber in the UK
The western Turkish region of Thrace
from Istanbul (inclusive) to the Greek and Bulgarian borders of Turkey
East Macedonia and Thrace in Greece
(including Thessaloniki)
The south eastern Bulgarian region
from Sofia (inclusive) to the border with Greece and Turkey, including the Bulgarian Black Sea region
Key Aims
- To formalise policies with regional and national government aimed at improving levels of R&D investment by businesses, government and higher education.
- To establish tools by which SMEs are able to identify and measure their knowledge assets through developing a range of benchmarking and scorecard instruments.
- To establish a regional mutual learning platform for promoting the trans-national exchange of practices towards enhancing regional R&D investment.
- To facilitate the transfer of good practices in terms of participation to EU funded research, links and co-operation between SMEs and research performers.
- To establish and launch an R&D Investment Strategy for each of the regions that is complementary to the existing policy initiatives and activities already being undertaken.
Impacts
The impact of this project will be that it will contribute to raising levels of R&D investment and expenditure across Europe and particularly in region of South-East Europe. This will be achieved by:
- Gaining access to SME thinking and assisting regional policymakers in their quest to develop a more knowledge-based economy and climate.
- Explaining the benefits of accurate knowledge asset measurement. For example, measurement provides organisations with a better overall understanding of their business hat may be communicated to a variety of stakeholders.
- Enhancing the potential for generating complementarities with other EU activities, particularly as the three South-East European (SEE) regions fall within the development objectives of the EU addressed via cross-border co-operation and schemes like INTERREG, PHARE, CARDS etc.
- Promoting relationships in South East Europe and boost research activities in the area.
- Catalysing the cross-fertilisation and transfer of relevant policies and strategies across the participating regions.