During the year 2023, and with an investment of 334 million euros in the technological centers of the Valencian Community, a social impact of approximately 3,883 million euros has been obtained, which represents a return for society 11.63 times greater than the investment made. This is one of the main results that can be extracted from a study prepared by the Network of Technological Institutes of the Valencian Community. (REDIT) with the collaboration of the Ministry of Innovation, Industry, Trade and Tourism.
This figure represents an increase compared to 2022 both in investment, which increased by 38.33% (from 241.5 million euros to almost 334) and in the value of social impact, which increased by 11.12% (from 3,495 million to more than 3,883).
Furthermore, the R&D activity of the centres generated €1.142 million of positive impact on the SDGs, in particular SDG 8, decent work and economic growth; in 9, industry, innovation and infrastructure; in 13, climate action and in 17, alliances to achieve the goals.
Also highlights the social impact generated in the innovation ecosystem by technological institutes. If we focus on the services they offer to companies, they achieve an impact of almost 53 million euros in SMEs and 127 million in large companies. Regarding the R&D cooperation of the technological centers with other agents and companies, the impact of the centers on SMEs in the Valencian Community exceeds 22 million and 5.4 million on large companies. With other strategic agents such as universities, it reaches 15 million and among the technological centers it reaches 26.7 million euros.
Finally, the centres have impacted society in different ways, for example with more 48 million related to the dissemination of its activity and the nearly 30.5 million for the fight for gender equality. They also had a very significant impact on training activities with more than 9 million allocated to the training of the unemployed, 3.5 million to internships for university students and 1.78 million to students in vocational training.
Impact of the REDIT partnership
Regarding REDIT as an association, with a total investment of almost 130 million euros, a social impact of more than 392.5 million has been achieved. This represents an increase of 14% compared to 2022, since it went from 344 million euros to 393. This means that, for every euro invested in the entity’s activities, a social return of 3.02 euros. Likewise, it should be noted that 15% of the total social impact of the technological institutes, or 575.5 million, corresponds to the work carried out by the REDIT association.
REDIT’s CEO, Gonzalo Belenguerstressed that “from the Network we have been measuring for years the impact we have on companies and the territory, but this study is particularly inspiring because it does not allow us to clearly see the obvious social and environmental impact of technological institutes”. “In addition”, he explained, “it allows us to show that when we invest in the promotion of knowledge agents such as technology centers, people are directly influenced, so we can see the effect of this public investment”.
Finally, the director of REDIT emphasized “the impact we generate by supporting the centers and which has been quantified at more than 575 million, which also allows us to see the importance of working in collaboration.”
To prepare this analysis, the SROI methodology was used, which focuses on the social return on investment taking into account extra-financial aspects such as inequalities and gender equality. In this sense, EDIT was a pioneer since these types of studies have traditionally been promoted unilaterally by governments or innovation ecosystems, but never by technology institutes. It is currently the most widely used method internationally to measure social impact and the only one that allows us to achieve a figure of economic return on investment.
