Business Support and Financing Programs

The Evidence Network serves business financing and support programs that are important innovation enablers in most countries. Such programs are intended to complement government services, and private sector services such as those offered by venture capital firms and angel investors. They are often offered by financial programs or entities that are sponsored by governments, or by other organizations that focus on various aspects of innovation.
 
Business financing and support programs provide financial assistance to firms, often supporting technological capacity. They provide information, technical and business advice, linkages and other forms of assistance or services essential for innovation. In many cases the financial contributions stimulate joint or collaborative projects or consortia, aiming to exploit university, government or other knowledge sources to the advantage of recipient firms.

Challenges

Some aspects of business financing and support programs are intended to be complementary to those of the private sector, however, they are often viewed as competitive and it is common for them to be required to defend the investments that they make. This makes it essential that their objectives be expressed in terms of innovation mission and service performance.

The Evidence Network's solution

To assess the service performance of these innovation enablers, The Evidence Network provides survey questions relating to the type and amount of financing provided (including tax incentives), the degree to which additional secondary financing was stimulated, the use to which the funds were put, and the quality of the financing processes.  These questions specifically elicit performance in relation to innovation objectives.  Programs providing business advice or services benefit from performance assessment questions focused on their provision of professional services and other non-technical inputs. These types of innovation-focused survey questions provide stakeholders with needed information critical to performance improvements and to defend investments of public funds.