The 8 members of the High-level Working Group will use their collective experience to benchmark and validate the Study Team's work and preliminary findings with their professional practice whilst also providing information, guidelines, research pointers, supportive documents for the development of the deliverables, advise on the designing the best model and feasibility of tools proposed by the study team for the EC pilot initiative. All 8 members come from the innovation policy-making and support community.

They have been selected according to a mix of criteria such as expertise/ practice of evaluation/monitoring of policies, agencies and programmes related to innovation, , a balance by countries in the EU 25, a balance by type of "organisations" taking into consideration both regional and national levels.

High Level Working Group Members are :

• Mrs Agnes ARCIER Head of directorate for innovation and competitiveness, Ministry of industry, France
• Mr Wolfgang CRASEMANN Head of Unit "Technology and Innovation Policy", German Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour - Germany ; Mrs Ullrike BLANKENFELD Deputy Head of Division, Technology and Innovation Policy, Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour - Germany
• Mr Kjell-Håkan NARFELT Board Member and Advisor, Vinnova.se - Sweden
• Mr Theo ROELANDT Director of the Department of Strategy, Research and International cooperation of DG Innovation, Ministry of Economic Affairs - Netherlands
• Mr Simone SORBI Director of Innovation and Research Policy office, Toscana Region - Italy represented by Mr Paolo GUARNIERI, Operative Unit, European Regions knowledge Innovation Network
• Mr Janis STABULNIEKS Managing Director of the Latvian Technological Center - Latvia
• Mr Peter STANOVNIK Vice-Chairman, National Council for Technology - Slovenia
• Mr Charlie WOODS Senior Director, Knowledge Management, Scottish Enterprise - United Kingdom ; Mr Neil MACCALLUM Head of Appraisal & Evaluation, Scottish Enterprise - United Kingdom

European Commission Representatives

Mr Reinhard BUSCHER, Head of Innovation Unit, Enterprise DG, European Commission Mr Alberto LICCIARDELLO, Innovation Unit, Enterprise DG, European Commission