LOCOMOTIVE aimed at providing regional policymakers with a better understanding of the current R&D investment policies of large private-sector companies in their regions compared to trends in other regions in Europe.

The core activities were:

• To set up a methodological framework to achieve directly comparable results in LOCOMOTIVE.
• To conduct structured interviews with key R&D managers, using the network of the partners
• To organise regional roundtable discussions on private sector R&D investments with actors from private and public sectors.
• To provide a view of current industrial thinking and then to use these results to encourage a more proactive dialogue about how regional policies might make R&D investment more attractive.
• Linked to these major activities had been leading-edge thinking and research on the development of concepts relating to internationally networked
• metropolitan hubs
• providing transcontinental flows of goods, capital and services and their role as stimulators of regional economic development in Europe. In this way the project contributed to, and profited from, ongoing research work, while concentrating on improving the understanding of key regional decision makers on current practices.

TUTECH coordinated the LocoMotive partnership comprising Central European University, Culminatum Innovation Oy Ltd, Helsinki Region Centre of Expertise, Rotterdam School of Management Erasmus University, Interlace-Invent APS, Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, Technologické centrum AV ČR and The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford.

Legacy

During the course of the project, the partners conducted a total of 42 interviews with senior managers, normally CTOs, of MNEs according to a predefined questionnaire and methodology developed at the beginning of the project. The interviews were then summarised for comparison and analysis.

A summary of the website can be found here.