First Evaluation of the second, third and fourth Round of VINNOVA VINN Excellence Centres

Douglas Reeve & Anne H Anderson
Luciënne Blessing, David Barton, Roland Clift, Kim Davis, Marie-Paule Delplancke-Ogletree, Martin Stutzmann, Anja Skrivervik, Visa Koivunen, Dominique Schreurs, Iain Thayne, Susanne Bödker, Yvonne Rodgers, Berit Sundby Avset, Anthony Turner, Sybrand van der Zwaag, Masato Enomoto, Kristiina Takkinen, Markku Kulomaa, Elizabeth Tanner, Josep Planell, Jack Hu, Alison McKay, Helmuth Möhwald, Joseph Seymour, Art Ragauskas, Maija Tenkanen, Torsten Braun, Gregory O´Hare, Rob Welch & Knud Erik Bach Knudsen

In this evaluation report we present the first evaluations of the second generation of Competence Research Centres (CRCs) that include 15 centres.

In 1995, NUTEK launched the first generation of CRCs providing a ten-year investment in 28 Competence Centres at 8 Swedish Universities. The first generation of CRCs during 2005-2007 has, generally speaking, been very well received by Swedish society. Also, in a European context, the Swedish CRC programme has a very good reputation. Due to those circumstances VINNOVA have initiated a second generation of CRCs that VINNOVA calls “VINN Excellence Centres”. The aim is to achieve concentration of resources in university research to deliver strong industrial impact. This is done by creating excellent multidisciplinary research environments at the universities in which industrial companies, public partners and research institutes actively participate. At present VINNOVA is running 19 VINN Excellence Centres. The 15 centres evaluated in this report have been operating two years, and have almost finished Phase 1.