Abstract
This chapter is about a SKIN application to the world of EU-funded research networks in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT). The application was commissioned by the DG Information Society and Media (DG INFSO) as an impact assessment of the funding strategies in the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) and ex-ante evaluation of the upcoming funding cycle called Horizon 2020. The focus of this chapter is on the changes of the SKIN model to become SKIN-INFSO, the strategy to calibrate the adapted SKIN model with empirical data from the European Commission to achieve realistic simulation results, and the ways we analysed and validated our results using network analysis. Details of the policy experiments using the SKIN-INFSO application for the study and their results are reported elsewhere [Ahrweiler, Gilbert, Pyka, Innovation policy modelling with SKIN. In: Johnston E et al (eds) Policy informatics. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2014, forthcoming]. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.