The EU-funded technical assistance project ‘INOVO’ is organizing a two-day training workshop in Sarajevo on September 4 and 5, 2013, with the objective to further assist and strengthen the capacities of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the entity ministries as well as ministries at the cantonal level. The workshop will be focused on how to design and implement innovation support measures assisting enterprises, universities and public research organizations to undertake joint innovation projects. It is also envisaged that such set-up of said projects may be facilitated by innovation centres in BIH – another beneficiary group of INOVO project.

This particular programme, implemented by INOVO, consists of several workshops, ranging from more general development workshop “Research & Development & Innovation (R&D&I) Capacities” held in March, 2013, which assisted in examining the overall situation and policies in R&D&I area, workshops in sharing EU practices in designing and utilizing innovation support measures to the specific training workshop for skills and competences development.

The overall objective of the workshop series is to enable the staff at different ministries to plan and implement the innovation support programmes which will be potentially supported also through EU funding. The workshop in September is tailored to address specific skills and needs of participants which were identified during the development workshop in May. Most of the participants prioritized the need for additional knowledge and skills in the area of project management, design of policy and support measures and project evaluation. The training process will utilise learning-by-doing method in order to adopt relevant experiences obtained in EU countries and concentrate on the advancement of outcomes of the previous workshops.