VIVA - European Virtual Center for Innovation Excellence Assessment

co-funded under 6. Framework Programme, Coordination Action (CA)

The strategic objective is to initiate and coordinate a European-wide exchange of results, approaches and ideas on innovation excellence assessment by the setting up of a European Virtual Center for Innovation Excellence Assessment (VIVA) web portal.

VIVA aims at creating a self-sustaining community and support the infrastructure for sharing the latest developments concerning the topic innovation excellence by bringing together the available critical mass of innovation competence experts in Europe. Thereby know-how, new technologies, methods and best practices concerning innovation excellence for SMEs will be exchanged in most effective and efficient ways.

VIVA will emphasis on four main themes of innovation excellence which will be addressed by four Special Interest Groups (SIGs):

• Management of innovation
  
• Innovation culture
  
• Assessment of innovation excellence
  
• Innovation in clusters
  

By fostering netwoking between research, public institutions, associations and industry a perfect basis will be created for starting a harmonisation or even standardisation process for innovation excellence assessment.