The Expert Panel on Services Innovation in the EU explored services innovation policies across the EU Member States. The Expert Panel made up of 16-20 leading services innovation experts, policy makers and practitioners. It assessed how the challenges of encouraging services innovation across the EU can be supported, at which level and through which policy means and, where relevant, through which (financial) instruments .The importance of the service sector has grown substantially in the last decade. Nearly all of the employment growth between 1995 and 2007 was due to services. In 2007, more than 155 million persons were engaged in service activities, representing 69.2% of total employment and producing 71.6% of the gross value added generated by EU27. Consequently, the European economy is a "service economy", and the innovative performance of the European service sectors is critical to future job creation, growth and competitiveness. This has also been recognized in many recent DG Enterprise initiatives and strategies.
However, despite an increased amount of research on services innovation, knowledge about services is still fragmented, particularly in relation to the type of framework conditions that most favour innovation in services. In addition, knowledge about how to implement effective and relevant policy instruments across the EU Member States is underdeveloped. To improve Europe’s performance in services innovation it is commonly accepted that a long-term policy strategy is needed - a broad approach that addresses services innovation in services and manufacturing sectors and also the challenge in a horizontal manner, as part of a broad-based innovation strategy.
The role of the Expert Panel was to explore the policy instruments and initiatives that have been applied to support innovation in services in Europe and to assess the best use and value of these policies. The experts evaluated the policy rationale behind successful initiatives both at the national level and the EU level and placed them in context of the European policy dimension in order to assess what can be European collaboration on a wider services innovation strategy.
