Voucher Schemes – a great career since end of the 1990s

Vouchers are used as financial support instruments for businesses for more than 20 years. The innovation voucher concept started its career in Limburg, Netherlands in 1997. 10 years later at least 25 voucher schemes were on the 'market' in Europe; in 2018 the estimate was about 50 (Source: EURADA 2018). Voucher schemes develop not only in EU but also in other countries such as Canada, Singapore, Switzerland and USA.

In 2018, EURADA (European Association of Development Agencies) presented the results of a study on 'Europe's Innovation Voucher Schemes' carried out in the framework of the Interreg Europe ESSPO project. The study characterised voucher schemes as a 'simple and an effective instrument of regional and territorial development'. They are designed, implemented and deployed by public authorities on national, regional or local level 'to encourage certain behaviours, in this case innovation, in targeted companies – SMEs'.

In brief, voucher schemes are based on the following conditions:

1. They support SMEs to purchase services from knowledge service providers;
2. They have a fast and simple application process and reporting;
3. They are issued by a local/ regional/ national agency by making a commitment to pay the service provider; and
4. They are limited in scope and amount committed. 

The figure below – based on a specific example – illustrates well the typical steps of a voucher scheme:

Beyond technology innovation, voucher schemes cover a variety of topics contributing to improve the competitiveness of SMEs. This variety is well illustrated in the Interreg Europe projects  DEVISE, EIS, ESSPO, INTRA, PURE COSMOS, STOB regions and TRINNO: those vouchers cover topics such as digitalisation, internationalisation, business succession and e-commerce (see table below).

EURADA comes to the conclusion that 'the popularity of voucher schemes is found in its real added value of encouraging innovation for segments of a region’s SME population which are difficult to target for public intervention and for which traditional subsidies are not suitable due to a general lack of awareness.'

In summary, Vouchers - a really great career!  which will most probably continue.

If you want hands-on-information on vouchers, please check the following table.

Vouchers in Interreg Europe projects - thematic objective SME competitiveness

Further information is to be found here:

• EURADA 2018: Europe’s Innovation Voucher Schemes: What makes them successful and for whom? RSA Winter Conference, 16 November 2018
• JRC 2016: Incentivising Innovation and Adoption of ICT: ICT Innovation Voucher Programmes

Image credit: Photo by energepic.com from Pexels