With its three funding pillars (individual R&D projects, cooperation projects and innovation networks) and an annual funding volume of around 500 million euros, ZIM has developed into an important pillar of German innovation policy. Central effects of the support are that R&D projects in smaller companies are made possible due to the relatively high coverage of the project volumes, transfers of technological knowledge and economic effects in the companies along the value chain.
As the current evaluation shows, ZIM has a somewhat more profound effect than its broader counterpart, but it has already reduced administrative requirements considerably and is therefore also suitable for SMEs with very little R&D experience. However, the demands on the level of innovation of the projects applied for and the level of R&D own contributions by the companies tend to be selected in the direction of more R&D-experienced companies.
In the context of the now adopted tax incentives for research from 2020, ZIM could increasingly address those target groups that are less well reached by tax incentives in the sense of using complementarities between the instruments. These are start-ups, companies with a low R&D intensity or rather low absolute R&D expenditure, and companies that want to start R&D activities for the first time. The evaluation paints a relatively differentiated picture of the effectiveness of Germany’s largest funding programme for innovative SMEs and can be obtained here.
The evaluation was implemented with the Institut für Höhere Studien (IHS) and the RKW Kompetenzzentrum.
Contact: Peter Kaufmann