In 2023, a group of experts on innovation in Croatia and across the EU came together at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb, to launch the Croatian Network in Innovation Policy (CNIP) — an informal initiative with a clear purpose: to advance research and improve the quality of policy support in the fields of innovation policy and technology management.
CNIP connects researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who share a commitment to strengthening Croatia’s and Europe’s innovation ecosystem. Through networking, pooling resources, and exchanging ideas and best practices, the network aims to become a driving force for smarter policies and stronger innovation outcomes.
The network offers:
• A forum for sharing knowledge, experiences, and new policy approaches.
• Opportunities for collaboration on research and policy-relevant projects.
• A web platform that acts as a hub for exchanging insights in innovation policy and technology management.
What We Do:
The goals of CNIP’s events and activities are to:
• Showcase the latest research from Croatia and neighbouring countries (“taking stock”).
• Identify key gaps in research and policy practice and explore solutions (“identify gaps”).
• Build a lasting network in innovation policy and technology management, with a joint plan of activities (“taking action”).
Rationale for Establishing CNIP
The inflow of the EU structural funds represents a historical opportunity for economic modernisation and technological upgrading of Croatia. However, the experience of the past is not the most encouraging in that respect. Therefore, it is essential to work towards changing the current situation. The EU funding and rules dominate the overall innovation policy of the country. It could be said that the EU Smart Specialisation policy criteria and policy logic entirely shape the Croatian innovation policy.
A Croatian S3 governance has met the requirements for administrative absorption of the EU funds. By this, we mean the ability and skills of authorities ‘to prepare acceptable plans, programmes, and projects in due time, to decide on programmes and projects, to arrange coordination among the principal partners, to cope with the vast amount of administrative and reporting work required by the Commission. However, governance requirements for effective and efficient absorptive capacity are uncertain and very much ‘work in progress’.
Even when effective and efficient absorption of funds occurs, it does not guarantee the structural transformation of the innovation system. It enables the innovation system to develop in size and competencies. However, perpetuating the innovation system may lead to a structurally unchanged system with all its structural weaknesses, such as poor commercialisation and weak science–industry linkages or low productivity and technological competitiveness. A structurally intact system is unable to face emerging new challenges. Hence, efficient and effective absorption of funds does not guarantee that the innovation system will be transformed so that it can respond to new challenges. This may be due to unchanged incentives where softer public funding based on ‘anything goes’ criteria has counterproductive effects. Hence, what matters the most is the transformative capacity or the extent to which a member state or region can use the EU cohesion funds to transform its innovation system in the way that it ensures future technology-based growth and sustainable development (World Bank, 2021). In that respect, Croatia has not developed its transformative capacity.
The core of these weaknesses is Croatia’s weak institutional capacity for design and policy co-creation. World Bank (2021) analysis shows that institutional capacity for S3 policy design is undeveloped and fragmentary. Institutional capacity for policy co-creation has been developed in fragments, but it has been lost and needs to be rebuilt by now. Institutional capacity for implementation of S3 has been developed to a satisfactory degree. Overall, the S3 governance system has a very rudimentary monitoring & evaluation capacity, while the overall system has an undeveloped capacity for self-monitoring and adjustment.
These issues reflect weaknesses in the public sector but also undeveloped public–private collaboration capacities and weaknesses in the overall support activities, including R&D capacities in innovation policy analysis.
A concrete step to strengthen Croatia’s institutional capacity for innovation policy, across design, co-creation, implementation, and monitoring & evaluation, was the establishment of the Croatian Network in Innovation Policy.
