Why we need a European Innovation Council

The simultaneous and often synonymous use of the two terms ‘research’ and ‘innovation’ is a source of confusion and misunderstanding, marring the dialogue between innovators, scientists and policy makers.

Nowhere has this confusion been more evident of late than in the discussions about the creation of a European Innovation Council (EIC), and its raison d’être vis-a-vis the European Research Council (ERC) and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

Innovation and research are very different animals: to use the well-worn aphorism - research turns money into knowledge, whereas innovation turns knowledge into value.

One consequence of this definition is that not every innovation requires new research results. A case in point here is Apple’s iPod/iTunes music download service.

Likewise, not all new knowledge generated by basic research will lead onto innovations. The majority of patents do not result in new products; most business model innovation does not require any invention in the classical sense.

This should not come as a surprise - the innovation process is completely different from the research process. Innovation begins where and when research leaves off, sometimes even ‘remembering’ research results from the distant past.

Combining insights

The innovation process uses knowledge as the fuel for innovation, in a novel way that generates value for the user of the innovation.

Typically this happens when knowledge from very different fields is combined. Again, this is exemplified in Apple’s ability to combine technology and design in its innovations. Another example concerns the fringes of research and technology, as in the case of Foldit, an online video game where users create protein structures in a playful way that then have the potential to be applied to structure-based drug discovery.

Driving innovation

For me, the bottom line is that promoting research to impel innovation is neither an effective nor a cost efficient strategy for driving innovation.

Given this, expanding the mandate of the ERC to include innovation and giving it a bigger budget will not end Europe’s innovation deficit.

Which begs another question: what about the EIT? Isn’t its mission to drive innovation? Yes, but by design it is limited to supporting innovation in pre-selected areas. Its operational units, the Knowledge and Innovation Communities, are focused on themes such as energy and climate, limiting its scope for innovation to certain fields which reflect public priorities. But would this approach have promoted start-ups like Google or Facebook?

To an extent the EIT approach to innovation is similar in kind to the approach of large research facilities and organisations like CERN and Max-Planck-Gesellschaft take to research, that is, focused but limited.

But in the same way as research in Europe needs the ERC to encourage high-quality, break-through research, innovation in Europe needs an EIC to complement the EIT’s concentration on grand societal challenges. An EIC is needed to promote out-of-the-box innovation in areas that are not currently in the focus of the big funders.

The EIC has to work in a very different way from the ERC. It needs different people too. To reap its full benefits innovations need to be scalable across several countries – at speed - in order to achieve economy-of-scale. That’s how Google and Facebook became billion dollar companies – something that rarely happens in Europe.

If we want to drive innovation in Europe to new, higher levels we need a separate body in addition to established organisations like EIT and ERC. I’m convinced the EIC will deliver if it is managed in accordance with the dynamics of the innovation process, and run by people who create environments in which innovation prospers and can be scaled up – the kind of people I call Innovation Architects.

Joachim von Heimburg is an adviser helping companies and other organisations to innovate. He was formerly head of Proctor & Gamble’s Connect + Develop R&D programme in Europe.