211functions for innovation. A more holistic view of innovation has thus been the goal.

The setup can thus be seen as a form of self-organizing public-private partnership (PPP). In order to receive a grant, a university and a company must enter into a contract that shows that they will cooperate for a longer time period. The grant corresponds to 30% of the funds the company uses to support the university. Each top sector has a steering group with representatives from industry, academia, and the state. These consortiums arrange various activities linked to innovation, internationalization, and skills development (Technopolis., 2019).

The idea of the top sector programs is that the whole process begins with research. This is emphasized by Paul Merkus, innovation partnership manager at the University of Technology in Eindhoven: “The process starts out with pure science, the exploration of theories. After that, professors and engineers will look at whether or not an idea is feasible in practice. In the end, companies will market it” (Eindhoven University of Technology, 2019). An evaluation carried out in 2017 pointed out that the top sector programs had reduced fragmentation and shifted the focus to collaborations rather than subsidies. One could also see some positive competence development and that the universities’ research was linked more closely to the needs of the business community. However, the programs had not led to radical innovation, mainly because they were so focused on already established actors and technologies (Dialogic, 2017).

4.4

Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies

in Austria

At first glance, the competence programs do not appear to be related to SIP, SHOK, or similar initiatives. However, there are some similarities. These programs were launched in the 1990s to increase the elements of research and development in industry by trying to combine academic research and private-sector R&D. The programs ran over a ten-year period, 1999–2009; the resources were distributed across sectors and with clear requirements for co-financing from industry. The J.-E. Bergkvist et al.

212purpose was to stimulate academic scientists and industrial researchers and developers to work together on strategic and translational research projects, closer to industry than university groups would typically work, however concentrating on prototype research and not on products ready for the market.

In 2006, the programs were restructured and came to be known as COMET (Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies) and they were placed under the authority of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency. At that time, there were 18 active competence centers with a total of 270 partners in academia and 150 in industry. In 2012, there were 40 active centers with a total of 1500 researchers involved. The programs were divided into three categories based on budget and scope. K2 is the largest in scope and runs over 10 years, while K1 runs for 7 years and K projects receive funding for 3–5 years with the aim of potentially becoming a larger project in the future. Overall, the research within the COMET programs is applied in nature. Since the start in 2008, a total of 22 centers have been formed; in 2017, there were a total of more than 1600 employees and a total budget of more than €100 million. According to the OECD, COMET has been successful in the sense that new skills have been developed. At the same time, it is noted that few new approaches to achieving innovation have been applied. The projects that aimed to create new