Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

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Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
ers. The market poses some major challenges for 
contractors, particularly due to its small size, the 
limited number of clients, new competitors entering 
the market and the increase in content-related re-
quirements despite low budgets.
4.2 Selected evaluations
4.2.1 Accompanying evaluation of the pilot call 
for proposals for Ideas Lab 4.0
The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) 
launched the Ideas Lab 4.0 pilot programme in 2017 
in close cooperation with the Federal Ministry for 
Digital and Economic Affairs (BMDW) and with fund-
ing from the Austria Fund and the National Founda-
tion for Research, Technology and Development, 
based on a recommendation by the Council for Re-
search and Technology Development and the results 
of a study on radical innovations
200
. The programme 
represents the first time that the sandpit method 
was used in the Austrian Research Promotion Agency 
(FFG), and is the first time that it was used in Austria 
with a focus on interdisciplinary projects with a po-
tential for application in industry.
Given that the programme was a novel concept, 
the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) com-
missioned a hypothesis-based accompanying evalua-
tion
201
which was carried out by inspire research. The 
goal of the evaluation was to document the most 
important learning experiences from the proposal 
and selection phase, to explain them, and then to 
process the available information to evaluate the 
achievement of the call’s objectives. The evaluation 
is mainly based on interviews with those involved in 
the programme (e.g. jury, participants, moderators 
and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency – FFG). 
During the workshop a participatory observation was 
also carried out.
200 See Warta and Dudenbostel (2016).
201 See Geyer and Good (2019).