Guiding Principles for Knowledge Valorisation and implementing Codes of Practice

The EU Guiding Principles for Knowledge Valorisation aim to maximise the transformation of research and innovation results into solutions that benefit society. They mainly address national, regional and local policy makers.

Practitioners and stakeholders can get more detailed guidance for their daily practice in dedicated Codes of Practice:

The Commission, Directorate-General Research and Innovation, is running an awareness raising campaign to support the uptake of the Guiding Principles and the Codes of Practice. The campaign consists of national events in the framework of a tour of capital cities, stakeholder events and training days that are open to all interested research and innovation actors.

The EU Guiding Principles for Knowledge Valorisation aim to maximise the transformation of research and innovation results into solutions that benefit society. They are mainly address to national, regional and local policy makers. The Recommendation was adopted by the Council on 2 December 2022.

More detailed guidance for practitioners and stakeholders are given in the Code of Practice on intellectual assets management and a Code of Practice on standardisation. The Commission adopted these specific Recommendations on 1 March 2023 to help putting the Guiding Principles into daily practice.

The Commission, Directorate-General Research and Innovation, is running an awareness raising campaign to support the uptake of the Guiding Principles and of the two Codes of Practice. The campaign consists of national events in the framework of a tour of capital cities, stakeholder events and training days that are open to all interested research and innovation actors.

The aim of the Recommendation on the guiding principles for knowledge valorisation is to adopt a common line on policy principles and measures for national, regional and local policy makers to maximize the transformation of research and innovation results into solutions that benefit society.

Knowledge valorisation is the process of creating social and economic value from knowledge by linking different areas and sectors and by transforming data, know-how and research results into sustainable products, services, solutions and knowledge-based policies that benefit society.

Boosting knowledge valorisation is essential to deliver more efficiently new solutions for building a greener, cleaner and healthier future.

The guiding principles engage all actors in the research and innovation ecosystem, focus on the connections and co-creation between actors, emphasise entrepreneurial skills and practices and cover the full range of knowledge generated by research and innovation activities.

News alerts: Commission welcomes adoption of the Council Recommendation on the guiding principles for knowledge valorisation

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Why we need guiding principles for knowledge valorisation

In 2008 the Commission adopted a recommendation on the management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer activities and the Code of Practice for universities and other public research organisations (C(2008)1329).

An update was needed, to focus on maximising the value of all knowledge assets generated by different types of actors in a dynamic research and innovation ecosystem.

New challenges and developments should be addressed, such as increasingly complex knowledge value-chains, new market opportunities created by emerging technologies, new forms of collaboration between industry, academia and public sector, involvement of citizens, as well as research and innovation foreign interference and reciprocity in the managing intellectual assets in international research and innovation cooperation.

The Council recommendation on the guiding principles for knowledge valorisation replace the 2008 Commission recommendation and the Code of practice for universities and other public research organisations.

Unique elements in the guiding principles

• broadens the scope of actors and activities compared to the 2008 Commission Recommendation 2008/416/EC
• implies a focus on the whole research and innovation ecosystem and its connections, on co-creation between actors and on the creation of societal value
• widens the scope to include intellectual asset management and emphasise the importance of developing entrepreneurial culture, practices and skills
• emphasises new needs for increasing the impact of research and innovation, such as addressing new and persistent policy challenges, enhancing citizen engagement and sharing of best practices among various actors

Guiding principles

1. Knowledge valorisation in research and innovation policy
   Support structures, resources, policies, strategies and practices; broadest possible societal utilisation of research and innovation intellectual assets involving all actors; policy uptake and standards; promoting equality, diversity and inclusion
    
2. Skills and capacities
   Competences, skills and capacities for all stakeholders; academia-industry-public sector mobility; participatory approaches to include talent, skills and tacit knowledge in valorisation; multidisciplinary collaborations, co-creation, social sciences, humanities and arts
    
3. System of incentives
   All research and innovation ecosystem actors to learn, apply and practice knowledge valorisation; businesses, SMEs, civil society, citizens, end-users and public authorities to be active partners in co-creation and joint experimentation; incentivise actors to collect, share and use metrics that improve learning and performance of knowledge valorisation
    
4. Intellectual asset management
   Policies and practices at organisational level; awareness in international environment and sovereignty; maximising socio-economic benefit for EU including contribution to sustainability; awareness and uptake of practices and tools in Open Science and Open Innovation; efficiency e.g. by supporting portfolio building and platforms linking offer and demand
    
5. Relevancy in public funding schemes
   Application of valorisation principles in publicly funded research; specific funding to incentivise valorisation early on in research including support to intermediaries
    
6. Peer learning
   Peer-learning, sharing of best-practices and developing common specifications; benchmarking to develop and promote common concepts, models and incentives
    
7. Metrics, monitoring and evaluation
   Adopt common definitions, metrics and indicators encompassing variety of valorisation channels; monitoring and evaluation aligned with ERA monitoring framework.

The guiding principles cover all categories of research and innovation ecosystem actors, such as, universities, higher education institutions, research and technology organisations, citizens, civil society organisations, investors, funders, researchers, innovators, students, industry, SMEs, start-ups, intermediaries (e.g. knowledge and technology transfer professionals), policy makers, public authorities, service providers (e.g. hospitals and public transportation providers), research and technology infrastructures and standardisation bodies.

Knowledge transfer mainly focuses on technology and commercialisation (as in the 2008 Recommendation), whereas knowledge valorisation has a broader scope, includes all actors from the research and innovation ecosystem and covers all types of intellectual assets beyond technology and Intellectual Property Rights.

The guiding principles for knowledge valorisation reflect the diversity of knowledge valorisation channels and tools and address sustainability, social challenges and other sectoral policy priorities.

They also encourage multidisciplinary collaborations, not only within the traditional domain of knowledge transfer in technological areas, but also involving disciplines such as social sciences, the humanities and the arts, including looking at the interlinkages between social, environmental and economic policies.

Knowledge valorisation requires dedicated resources and skills in order to maximize the value creation from the investments in European research and innovation. It requires continued and up-scaled efforts in developing knowledge transfer and brokerage professionals and facilitators who act as intermediaries between relevant research and innovation actors.

The guiding principles draw attention to the fact that we need to create value from publicly funded research and need to strengthen this aspect and consider complementary funding, e.g. proof of concept schemes, to ensure that resources are also devoted to knowledge valorisation.

Metrics, monitoring and evaluation of knowledge valorisation rely on already existing indicators, as they already cover many valorisation activities. There is also a need to develop new metrics for areas not yet covered by existing indicators. To ensure administrative efficiency in Member States and stakeholders, the monitoring and evaluation of the knowledge valorisation operations will be aligned with the wider European Research Area (ERA) monitoring framework and synergies will be developed with other relevant ERA actions.