Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol1-1 > A catalyst for change

Europe needs to become more innovative. The reasons are clear: we are facing today a great number of complex challenges for which we need to find innovative solutions. Climate change, energy supply and an ageing population are just the tip of the iceberg. At the same time, economic conditions are changing. For example, prohibitive cost, congestion and pollution make us re-think long supply chains and offer new opportunities for innovation largely organised in Europe. But let us not forget that countries like India or China are not only catching up, but are much faster at adaptating to new circumstances.

Clearly, large challenges of this kind need bold answers and new thinking to turn them into opportunities. The question is how to get there. It has been recognised for quite a while that the way we create, share and disseminate knowledge is key to the solution. Knowledge is what energises our economies and will do so even more in the future. Knowledge needs to flow freely between all actors of what is often called the knowledge triangle – research, education and business. This flow drives new business creations, fostering growth and jobs and tackling societal and environmental challenges. Good news first, there is probably no serious shortage of knowledge in Europe. However, we often suffer from fragmentation and silo-approaches. The way we share, disseminate and adapt knowledge clearly merits a closer look.

Europe’s flagship initiative to overcome such barriers is the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Its mission is to be the catalyst for a step change in the European Community’s innovation capacity and impact. Of course, more innovation is not simply a goal in itself. We expect the EIT to deliver on a number of points, notably new business creation both for existing industry as well as for new endeavours; education and development of entrepreneurial people; and societal impact through job creation and brain gain.

The way to achieve this mission is precisely by promoting true integration of the knowledge triangle, enabling key actors from research, education and business-entrepreneurship to work closely together.

What is so new about this initiative? First, the EIT simultaneously addresses all three sides of the knowledge triangle. Of course, this is not done in isolation or in competition, but will complement and thrive on other national and EU actions. Second, the EIT also addresses leadership. We are fully aware that particularly the latter aspect touches upon sensitive areas. However, accepting, building and exercising leadership is a precondition for the much needed reforms in both our knowledge institutions and in the way co-operation is carried out.

In the EIT, those ideas find their expression in the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), which bring together Europe’s most excellent resources from higher education, research and business-entrepreneurship to target a specific challenge.

The KICs will serve as test-beds through which we address a number of critical questions: what makes people, teams and places innovative? What builds entrepreneurship and how can we train and educate entrepreneurial people? How can open innovation work for advanced industry and how can we measure it?

In practical terms, the KICs have been conceived as collaborative partnerships with a strong legal and financial structure, bringing together internationally distributed but thematically convergent partners.

The first two or three KICs, to be selected by the end of 2009, will focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation, sustainable energy and future information and communication society. In these areas of high societal and economic relevance, KICs will build innovative webs of excellence across sectors and backgrounds, covering the entire innovation web and bridging local capabilities to Europe-wide opportunities.

The KIC structure will be one of co-locating higher education, research and business-entrepreneurship in co-location centres with face-to-face contact between people in the web. This enables innovation to be initiated at any place in the web, leads to the desired mobility of knowledge throughout the web and bridges to European opportunities. Innovation is not a linear process and sharing and dissemination of knowledge is key. This needs to be reflected in the way we work together.

Certainly, the EIT alone will not roll up Europe’s innovation landscape overnight, but we believe it can create further momentum for a muchneeded cultural change

An absolute precondition for achieving these objectives is leadership. Without clear leadership, KICs will lack both focus and drive. This goes hand in hand with another precondition we believe is essential for the success of a KIC: the setting up of a monitored “business plan” for the entire KIC operation. By “business plan” we mean that KICs will need to set out deliverables with targeted investment returns and drivers identified upfront in all its areas of action, leading to relentless focus on results. A third and absolutely crucial precondition is the promotion of entrepreneurship. We need to breed a new generation of people with the entrepreneurial spirit to carry things forward and to keep the system moving and we need to exploit entrepreneurship in any sense of the word towards new business creation. Indeed entrepreneurship can be seen as the glue holding the innovation web together and building successful new business and job creation.

What really distinguishes the EIT and makes it a truly novel initiative lies in its quality of combining excellence with leadership, commitment, delivery and entrepreneurship. The EIT’s financial contribution to KIC activities – limited to 25% – will help to ensure the commitment of KIC partners. All other sources of KIC funding must come from existing European and national programmes and partner organisations.

Certainly, the EIT alone will not roll up Europe’s innovation landscape over night; but we believe it can create further momentum for a much-needed cultural change, thereby complementing other initiatives such as the Modernisation Agenda for Universities or the creation of the European Research Area.

If successful, the KICs will inspire change not only within their participating institutions but can serve as examples for co-operation and new methods more generally.

And there are a number of areas where the KICs have the potential to induce such cultural change. For example we expect them to build a culture of performance-orientated innovation and new business creation. This will be achieved through highly interactive physical and virtual communication, through the recognition of exceptional performance, but also through the EIT Entrepreneurship Academy for best practices that we plan to set up.

Another area is helping universities build innovative new curricula and new education methods and programmes. The EIT will give higher-education institutions further incentives to target strong multi-disciplinary and entrepreneurial skills and offer an EIT “label” that can be attached to degrees and diplomas. Moreover, the EIT plans to put in place an award, recognising entrepreneurship among students and researchers.

A third area where we expect positive impact of the KICs is in new business creation, fostered by new business and innovation models, but also by new, faster and more agile ways of financing such as the EIT Foundation we are currently establishing.

The EIT will implement world-scale benchmarking and simple performance score cards to ensure that the KICs remain focused on delivery. We do not want red tape to be in the way of innovation. We want simple and effective tools doing the job.

Clearly, the EIT is part of a larger challenge of vitalising European innovation. This endeavour has all chances of success if we recognise and accept the need for change, are open for change and finally – and most importantly –if we act and deliver now.

For more information, visit: Website: www.eit.europa.eu