EURBEST

The EURBEST project brings together 23 partners from a wide geographical spread of regions in Europe to take Benchmarking to a new level. The focus of the project will be to produce Transfer tools, methodologies and procedures to enable any region that wishes to transfer best practice from an exemplar region into their own region to do so. The project builds on the excellent work undertaken in the EURADA European Benchmarking project which developed models to identify best practice in the area of business support at regional and sub regional level. The models developed provided statistical (quantitative) evidence of best practice supported by qualitative assessment of the best practice identified in relation to areas such as company start ups, innovation , information society, Higher Education links to business, inward investment and a range of other indicators. The EURBEST project will further develop the models used in the previous project by: – Improving the collection of statistical data – Creating an interactive system of data collection – Developing transfer mechanisms, procedures and tool kits – Bringing together senior executives of RDAs to provide qualitative evidence of best practice – Getting behind the evidence to show why similar regions (levels of investment in business support) have different levels of success – Producing tool kits and learning modules for other regions to use (inside and outside the project) – Creating a Community of Good / Best Practice – Disseminating information and learning from the project to a wider audience The project will focus on five key components to achieve its goals which are: – Management and Co-ordination of the operation – Quantitative Analysis – Qualitative Analysis – Exchange, Transfers (of Best Practice) and joint Development Knowledge Management and Dissemination of Experience The large partnership is fully committed to this project and believe that it will provide policy makers at regional, national and EU level with a new system to both identify and transfer good practice.