Cooking the innovation pie

EU Commissioner Maire Geoghegan Quinn

Launching a public consultation today (17 June) she posed the question, “How can Europe become a better place to make scientific progress, and a better place to make products and services based on that knowledge?”

Finding the answer depends on getting input from the broader public, Geoghegan Quinn believes. “Consultation is very important,” she told a meeting and webcast, noting that since her term began in January she has talked widely, to researchers, scientists, member states, innovators and businesses about the “barriers, blockages and barricades” that stop bright ideas reaching the market. These obstacles must cleared before the foundations of the ‘Innovation Union’ can be laid, she said.

The issues raised by the audience and Geoghegan Quinn were a familiar litany: the status, quality and funding of universities; the mobility of researchers and entrepreneurs; the bureaucracy that stifles the Framework research programmes; the lack of a single European patent; access to basic research and intellectual property for small companies; the chronic shortage of funding for start-ups, marshalling public procurement to create market pull for new products and services; applying structural funds to update science infrastructure; creating technical standards; keeping expensively-trained female scientists in the workforce, and so on.

If this list is familiar, there is also the knowledge that the previous attempt to increase funding, shape policy and put R&D in a position to drive economic growth – the Lisbon Strategy – was a failure.

Not surprisingly then, the burning question from the public is, “What is different now?” How can EU2020 as the successor to the Lisbon Strategy succeed in building an ‘Innovation Union’ when Lisbon - with its similar, nebulous, objective of creating a Knowledge Economy - failed?

One critical piece of the jigsaw is that Geoghegan Quinn agrees the problems raised by the audience are relevant to the goal of creating the ‘Innovation Union’ and therefore need to be tackled within the scope of EU 2020. She has made headway already in dealing with the bureaucracy that swamps the grant application process.

“These [simplifications] will all make Framework and the way we do business easier and simpler, so we don’t have the complicated bureaucracy we have at the moment. I don’t want scientists and researchers to be dealing with bureaucracy, I want them to be in their labs,” Geoghegan Quinn said.

Given her previous posting at the European Court of Auditors, bringing about changes to the accounting system could be seen as low-hanging fruit for Geoghegan Quinn. But she believes the environment in which the European Union is shaping the EU 2020 strategy will help smooth the path for other reforms.

This environment is also very different from that which the Lisbon laboured under. “For the first time ever, Research and Innovation is absolutely central to policy,” said Geoghegan Quinn.

Indeed, the European Commission sees Research and Innovation as the route via which Europe will exit from the economic crisis, a view that is supported by the European Parliament and the European Council. Research and Innovation will be the central theme when EU leaders meet in October.

“All the main players are going to be focused on Research and Innovation; that’s what is different from Lisbon,” Geoghegan Quinn said. “We have a wonderful opportunity [to drive reform] that won’t come along in the near future. As a comprehensive response to the worst economic crisis in decades, EU 2020 will get a different response from the Lisbon Strategy.”

She added, “Everyone is committed to doing whatever is necessary at member state level and as a union, to ensure whatever needs to be done to help business innovate, will be done.”

The debate is continuing online on the Innovation Union page on Facebook.