Rene Wintjes

René Wintjes is senior research fellow at UNU-MERIT since 1998, and coordinates the research theme on economics of innovation. He studied Economic Geography at Nijmegen University. He previously worked at the Economic Institute for Medium and Small Enterprises and the Faculty of Applied Geography and Planning of Utrecht University, where he obtained his PhD. His research projects are mostly commissioned by various DG's of the European Commission, or national or regional governments. Fields of special interest include: research and innovation policy, regional innovation systems, policy evaluation and impact assessment, SME innovation policy instruments, ICT enabled innovation, social innovation, transnational policy learning, and Responsible Research and Innovation. Recent projects include: SIMPACT (social innovation), Business Innovation Observatory, European Observatory for Clusters and Industrial Change, New technologies and digitisation: opportunities and challenges for the social economy and social enterprises, Responsible Research & Innovation Ecosystems at Regional Scale (RRI2SCALE); Evaluation study on the implementation of cross-cutting issues in Horizon 2020, EC, RTD/2021/SC/009.