Overview

Service innovations are an important driver for competitiveness, growth and job creation.
Many service innovations have the transformative power of fundamentally changing existing business relations and creating new markets or even entirely new sectors, most often driven by the use of ICT. Service innovations affect all industries, services sectors as well as manufacturing. Many Member States and regions have already spotted the great opportunities offered by service innovations and launched specific measures to unlock its potential. The objective of the KIS Partnering Event in Warsaw is to look in possibilities to better support service innovations through Structural Funds, taking into account that these possibilities are still not widely enough used.

The KIS Partnering Forum, which will be held in Warsaw on 27 & 28 January 2011, will bring together some 150 participants from relevant national, regional and local authorities and public agencies responsible for the promotion or support of innovation and having a specific interest in applying Structural Funds aid to the services sector. The KIS Partnering Forum will discuss novel and groundbreaking approaches to supporting service innovation, which is of particular interest for programme managers and innovation and development agencies who are interested in stimulating regional development through new economic activities. The seminar is planned as a 1, 5 day event and it will be divided into four sessions.

Session 1: Why invest in services innovation at the regional level? The rationale 
Session 2: What is being done? Supporting new service concepts through Structural Funds – practical examples
Session 3: How is it being done?  Practical experiences of accessing Structural Funds to support new service concepts
Session 4: The next frontier - policies and initiatives of the future