Representatives from Belgium, Germany, Spain and Sweden presented their learning experiences at the event, and discussions addressed the critical issue of how evaluation and policy-making should relate to each other. Building on earlier work on this topic, the MLE’s final report presents a number of good practices and demonstrates some of the latest evaluation techniques being explored by R&D evaluation practitioners from 12 countries. It explores three core areas: the added-value of taking a behavioural change perspective (understanding how the R&D and innovation behaviour of companies changes in response to policy measures); how novel combinations of mixed-method approaches can be used to overcome some of the key issues facing evaluation; and the opportunities and challenges offered by big data (and data linking) in policy evaluations.

For further information

An article summarising the results of the MLE on Evaluation of Business R&D Grant Schemes is available for download.

The Final Report of the MLE on Evaluation of Business R&D Grant Schemes, ‘Behavioural Change, Mixed-Method Approaches and Big Data’ is also available for download.

The web page of the MLE on Evaluation of Business R&D Grant Schemes