The Beyond Best Practice summit held in early July was designed to test the water for a new network around the theme of 'taking new knowledge more rapidly to market.' The event was driven by the Commission's new Regions for Economic Change initiative and by the vision of the Chairman of the South West of England Regional Development Agency (South West RDA), Juliet Williams. Juliet had been extremely interested in pursuing such a network after dialogue with other regions at the March launch of RfEC in Brussels. She also discussed it with the new DG Regio Director General, Dirk Ahner, and was responding to the interest shown by the Commissioner for Regional Policy, Danuta Hübner, in some of the work happening in the South West region. 
 
The summit, 'Beyond Best Practice', explored how Europe's regions can help to speed up the commercialisation of R&D through regional policy and programmes and the possibilities of a network under this theme. Commissioner Hübner attended the second half of the summit, along with officials from DG Regio, having expressed an interest in the approach being adopted. 
 
The summit report (Adobe Acrobat Reader Document - 75.97kb) summarising the outcomes of the summit has been published. 
 
Beyond Best Practice: Delegate List (Microsoft Word Document - 277.50kb) 
 
Photos from the summit (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation - 255.48kb) 
 
Beyond Best Practice: Programme (Adobe Acrobat Reader Document - 455.50kb) 
 
Beyond Best Practice: The Roundtable Debates (Microsoft Word Document - 247.29kb) 
 
Beyond Best Practice: Regions for Economic Change (Microsoft Word Document - 228.86kb)

Some quotes from Delegates

"The deconstruction process is a very important tool of reverse analysis that many times is forgotten by the partners who only pay attention to the outcomes. I believe that it is very important to find out aspects and ways of thinking that can be transferable from one Member (State) to another." 
Dimitris Karagiannis, Western Greece, GREECE 
 
"It's true that knowledge remains unexploited, but more important is the fact that we should explore new territories. This means we should not be past-dependent (Europe is too attached to the old way of doing things) but enter into new opportunities." 
Patricia Somorrostro-Lopez, Galicia, SPAIN 
 
"It is important not only to present best-practice, but to identify success factors and determine framework conditions to draw conclusions on the transfer of experience. Partners could aim at the joint development of new policies." 
Andreas Fiedler, Saxony-Anhalt, GERMANY

More information

If you wish to find out more about, or discuss any aspect of, the summit or the network bid, please contact Maria Ioannou, Policy Manager (Europe) at the South West RDA, either by phone on +44 (0) 1392 229337 or by email at maria.ioannou@southwestrda.org.uk