The key aim of the SEEK programme is to achieve an improved understanding how policy measures should be best conceived to promote innovation, human capital formation, IT adoption, and the responsible stewardship of natural resources, with the ultimate goal of supporting European productivity and competitiveness. The programme welcomes proposals for innovative and applied economic research on the following topics:

• Generation of Knowledge and Innovations
  Research on issues such as: Formal and informal processes of human capital formation; investments in intangible capital including R&D&I and information technologies (incentives, complementarities, institutions); organisation of R&D&I; efficiency of knowledge markets; determinants of the direction of technological change (e.g. environmental innovations); economic policy requirements and decision processes: budgetary decisions, voters’ preferences on future investments; financing of human capital formation; and R&D&I in the public and private sector.
  
  
• Diffusion and Adoption of Knowledge and Innovations
  Research on issues such as: Efficient mechanisms for the adoption of new technologies and innovations; incentives for the diffusion of new technologies and their impacts (ICT, energy & green technologies); education, learning processes, knowledge diffusion, and network externalities; innovation financing and adoption; formation of expectations on new markets and products.
  
  
• The Use of Knowledge by Entrepreneurs and Industries
  Research on issues such as: Knowledge as a production factor and complementary investments; efficient use of internal and external resources; IT-based knowledge management; governance mechanisms for efficient knowledge use; firm-level organisational change; knowledge-based industries; and intersectoral knowledge flows.
  
  
• Consequences of a Knowledge-Based Economy
  Research on issues such as: Innovations, technology shocks and their implications for economic growth; income and wealth distribution; changes in task and skill requirements; employment consequences of innovation, skill-biased technological change, and internationalisation processes; impact of financial innovation on the real economy; effects of new technologies on social interactions.
  
  
• Challenges of a Knowledge-Based Economy for Economic Policy
  Research on issues such as: Strengthening R&D&I and intellectual property rights; tax incentives for intangible capital investments; strategies to meet skill requirements; regulation, innovation, and financial-sector stability; strategies to improve knowledge-production efficiency in the public sector; R&D&I policies in Europe's multi-tiered government system.