The LocoMotive Project

LocoMotive aims at providing regional policy makers with a better understanding of the current R&D investment policies of large private sector companies in their regions compared with trends in other regions in Europe. The core activities are

• 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 (which may extend beyond their specific region);
• 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 pro-active dialogue about how regional policies might make R&D investment more attractive.

Linked to these major activities will be 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 will contribute to, and profit from, ongoing research work, while concentrating on improving the understanding of key regional decision makers on current practices.
The chief tangible result will be a study and associated dissemination activities on current R&D investment policies of selected major companies and their relation to regional strategies, together with proposals for how future regional and European Commission activities might better support R&D localisation in Europe. The study itself will be used as a means to bring together R&D managers, regional policy makes and public funded researchers to discuss ways to work together which may well lead to spin-off networks and activities requiring no specific programme support, but which nevertheless act positively towards regional developments in R&D.