From Fund Absorption to Measuring Real-World Impact

Innovation policy can no longer be assessed solely in terms of how much funding has been spent, how many projects have been completed or whether formal programme targets have been met. What matters increasingly is whether public support genuinely strengthens companies’ technological capabilities, enables the successful commercialisation of R&D outcomes and delivers lasting economic benefits.

The authors argue that traditional evaluation models tend to focus on output and outcome indicators, such as the number of funded projects, the value of support awarded, patents filed or solutions brought to market. While these figures help illustrate the scale of public intervention, they do not always show whether the observed changes were actually driven by public funding or whether their effects are sustained over time.

The Commercialisation Compass: a Modern Approach to Evaluation

The proposed Commercialisation Compass is designed to shift the focus from assessing regulatory compliance and fund absorption towards measuring the actual impact of innovation policy on business and technological development.

The framework provides a multidimensional view of the outcomes generated by public funding. Alongside economic performance, it considers technological progress, patent activity, commercialisation capacity, organisational resilience and wider systemic impact.

This approach could support comparisons across funding programmes, calls for proposals and beneficiary groups, while also helping to identify projects with particularly strong technological and market potential.

Evidence-Based Public Policy

The publication reflects a broader European shift from traditional fund administration towards evidence-based governance. This means moving beyond the monitoring of expenditure and strengthening the public sector’s capacity to learn, adapt and design more effective instruments for technological development.

From this perspective, evaluation is no longer simply a tool for control and accountability. It becomes an integral part of the strategic management of innovation policy.

The paper’s conclusions are clear: effective management of public innovation funding requires tools that assess not only how much has been spent, but above all what lasting economic, technological and systemic outcomes have been achieved as a result.

The publication was developed as part of the publicly funded research project “The Effectiveness of Financial Support Mechanisms for the Commercialisation of New Technologies in Poland.”

The full policy paper is available below.