New innovation policy must form the basis for action

Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn has been working on the details of the Innovation Union for the last few months.

“There’s not so much new in the debate,” said Hans Martens, the chief executive of the Brussels-based European Policy Centre. Discussions about innovation have been going on for years in Brussels and work on the Innovation Union document itself began in 2009. “It’s now all about getting action. Action, action, action.”

One big difference now is that innovation has been pushed up the EU agenda, moving beyond being a concern of R&D or industry directorates, with the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, deciding to dedicate the summit of heads of state in December to the subject.

The European Commission has made an Innovation Union one of the flagship programmes of its Europe 2020 strategy, designed to deliver, “a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy” for the 27-nation bloc. The Innovation Union’s stated aim is to re-focus R&D and innovation policy on problems such as climate change, energy and resource efficiency, health and demographic change and to strengthen the innovation chain, from blue sky research to commercialisation.

Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU Commissioner for research, innovation and science, has been working on the details of the Innovation Union for the last few months, focusing on tasks such as simplifying financial rules, reducing bureaucracy when applying for research funding, setting up a panel to come up with a new way to measure innovation, and fleshing out the idea of European Innovation Partnerships.

Next month’s announcement will bring these ideas together and lay the ground for the inter-institutional debate leading up to the December summit of heads of state.

John Wood, chair of the European Research Area Board (ERAB), a body set up to advise the Commission on how to develop the European Research Area, hopes the main message in the Innovation Union policy document will be “take bigger risks.”

“The constraints of financial regulations aren’t appropriate for high-risk research. The bureaucracy for research funding needs to be removed as soon as possible. The key is to loosen and clarify the regulations,” he told Science|Business.

Wood also emphasised the need to start putting ideas into practice. Last year ERAB published its first annual report entitled ‘Preparing Europe for a New Renaissance’ in which it called for a fundamental change in the way research is done. The board’s second report ‘Realising the new Renaissance,’ to be published on October 21, will focus on how this vision can be realised.

Several commentators highlight the role that could be played by the public sector in making innovation a reality. “We desperately need to innovate in the public sector,” said the EPC’s Martens, referring not just to public procurement but also to the way that the public sector delivers health and education, how public administration organises itself, in short coming up with innovative processes as well as technologies.

Next month’s policy document is expected to include ways in which the EU will help create the Innovation Union and what member states will need to do at a national level.

It will list the areas that the proposed European Innovation Partnerships will focus on, address how structural funds can be used effectively for cutting-edge research, come up with ideas of how links between education, business, research and innovation can be strengthened and build on the steps taken so far for removing bureaucracy.