European Innovation Partnerships

Innovation has moved up the political agenda, and the European Commission is seizing on this opportunity to try and turn long-mulled ideas into reality.

One such idea is the European Innovation Partnership (EIP). This is conceived as a new approach to involving all member states in linking up the innovation chain to get products through to market faster. The EIP is being fleshed out as part of the Europe 2020 strategy, the Commission’s plan for innovation-led industrial growth and economic revival.

Detractors say the EIP, with its vision of partnerships between the EU and member states, plugging basic research directly to innovation to short-circuit the development of technologies, make breakthroughs and get the results into the marketplace, is little more than a new name for an old idea. The Commission begs to differ, insisting the political environment has changed and that such partnerships have the potential to unleash benefits for the economy and society.

“There has been a shift in policy thinking, in the strategic approach,” Marion Dewar, who is responsible for innovation and research policy in the cabinet of Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, told a Science|Business meeting convened to discuss the issue. “We’re getting the message that [EIP’s] time has come,” Dewar said.

The vision is that each European Innovation Partnership will focus on one of the so-called Grand Challenges. These are big problems in need of concerted action, such as building a low-carbon society, ensuring Europe has a secure energy supply, ensuring Europeans not only have a longer life span, but that they also have a longer ‘health span’. These issues were identified in last year’s report from the European Research Area Board and will be set out in more detail in the Research and Innovation Strategy that will be at the heart of Europe 2020.

“We need to find breakthroughs in these areas by 2020,” John Bell, head of Geoghegan-Quinn’s cabinet, told the Science|Business meeting. “The European Innovation Partnerships are a means to identify how research can be used to solve the problem.”

EIPs will not be an extra layer or have a new legal basis. Instead, the Commission sees them as a means of streamlining the EU’s existing programmes and instruments, such as structural funds, the reform of universities and the Joint Technology Initiatives, and directing them towards the same goals.

“The partnerships are a point of convergence, pulling the elements together,” Dewar said.

By specifying which of the Grand Challenges it wants to focus on, the Commission is bidding to influence the direction of innovation and ensure it is linked to Europe’s big problems. A knock-on effect of this will be providing certainty for industry on what areas of technology will get support. “We need more acceptance for modest technology-neutral intervention in areas of massive strategic importance,” Dewar said.

The nitty gritty of how EIPs operate is still being hammered out. One aspect that needs to be decided is whether the partnerships will remain broad topics or drill down into a more specific area. The Commission is in “brainstorming mode,” Dewar said.

Two or three pilot EIPs, or “trailblazers” as Dewar called them, will be launched in the the autumn. “We need to give it a face. We can’t just present the idea in abstract with diagrams,” said Dewar.

The pilot programmes are intended to show member states and business how the partnerships can work in practice, to convince them to back the idea and help make EIPs a success.

“The private sector will only engage if there is a good business case, not because of some political diktat,” Dewar acknowledged. In order to present a more compelling argument for each EIP, the directorate-general for research is considering hiring a chief economist.

“We want to move towards evidence-based policy, and policy [that] is driven by creating jobs rather than policy driven by instruments,” Dewar said. “The strength of the economic case is particularly important because of the economic crisis now.”

Participants from industry at the meeting pointed to a number of obstacles that need to be overcome, not least getting member states to approve the plans. Pfizer’s Director of Science Policy in Europe Adam Heathfield said, “Please don’t park these issues and assume they’ll disappear over time. They need to be identified and tackled full on for the partnership to work.”

Dewar agreed. “The tricky issues cannot be swept under the table,” she said. “The immense difficulties must not be underestimated. If the barriers were easy they’d have been broken down by now.”