| Author (Person) | Davies, Eric | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Publisher | ProQuest Information and Learning | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Series Details | 14.4.03 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Publication Date | 14/04/2003 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Improving the effectiveness of the European Union's innovation policy is the aim of 'Innovation Tomorrow' - a Communication published by the European Commission on 8 April 2003. It examines how innovation policy can best be harnessed to help meet the demands of the Lisbon Strategy and make the Union the world's leading economic force by 2010. The emphasis is on developing a 'third generation' innovation policy which is flexible and able to respond to a changing environment. The European Commissioner responsible for enterprise, Erkki Liikanen, said: 'The objective of innovation policy must be to find out where bottlenecks are occurring and to propose solutions ... We need a better understanding of the interfaces between innovation and other policies such as, for example, competition, employment, regional and educational policies.' Background The current debate on innovation has its roots in the European Commission's December 1995 Green Paper on innovation and the associated Action Plan (Innovation for growth and employment) published the following November. Significant additional impetus was given to the debate when the March 2000 Lisbon European Council agreed that the European Union should become 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion' by 2010. According to the Commission's DG Enterprise, the Lisbon Summit identified two innovation-related needs: to ensure that maximum benefit for innovation is derived from Member State and EU-level research, and to create a 'friendly environment' for starting up and developing innovative businesses (see Innovation and technology Transfer). Lisbon also established the European Research Area. The ERA was described as 'the central pillar of EU activities in the field of research and the reference framework for European research policy issues' in an October 2002 Commission Communication The European Research Area: providing new momentum. Strengthening - Reorienting - Opening up new perspectives. The Communication reviewed the ERA and suggested how it might be strengthened. Achieving the goal set at Lisbon has required the Union to adopt and adapt a wide range of policies and 'Lisbon' has thus come to permeate much of the Union's decision-making in recent years. The importance of innovation in helping the EU meet the Lisbon goal was reiterated by the 2002 Barcelona European Council. The 1996 innovation Action Plan was recalled in the September 2000 Communication Innovation in a knowledge-driven economy, which noted that, whilst the innovation performance of some individual Member States was better than the Union's main competitors, the overall situation was disappointing. The Communication identified five objectives for enhancing innovation in the EU:
The Commission's 2000 Communication also included the first 'European Innovation Scoreboard', which provides a picture of both the Union's innovation performance (in some cases compared to the United States and Japan) and Member States' relative strengths and weaknesses. An associated Trend Chart summarises Member States' progress towards the objectives of the Communication. The latest Innovation Scoreboard included a list of the Union's 'top 10' regions for innovation:
It also looked at innovation in the Candidate Countries and concluded that a lack of reliable data is hindering effective decision-making (see EU's innovation performance still needs improvement, but there are encouraging signs for the future). September 2002 saw the publication of More research for Europe, towards 3% of GDP - a Communication via which the Commission sought to stimulate debate on how the EU might reach the objectives for R&D investment set by the Barcelona European Council: increasing it from 1.9% of GDP in 2000 to 3% by 2010. It noted that Europe is under-performing in innovation and identified 'the wide range of policy areas which must be mobilised in a coherent manner' if performance is to be improved. Innovation was also considered in the December 2002 Communication Industrial policy in an enlarged Europe, which identified 'three key factors of industrial competitiveness [which] deserve particular attention: knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurship.' With reference to the Union's need to become more innovative, the Communication said: 'Every sector and activity needs to be constantly initiating, refining and improving its products, services and processes. The conditions to stimulate vigorous innovation have to be in place.' The Green Paper Entrepreneurship in Europe, published in January 2003, looks at the nature and significance of entrepreneurship and the Union's performance in encouraging it. 'The challenge for the European Union' it states, 'is to identify the key factors for building a climate in which entrepreneurial initiative and business activities can thrive. Policy measures should seek to boost the Union's levels of entrepreneurship, adopting the most appropriate approach for producing more entrepreneurs and for getting more firms to grow.' It identifies a number of options for policy development and calls for greater coordination, in much the same way as the Commission sees the need to improve the environment for innovation: 'Entrepreneurship requires a coordinated approach because of its horizontal nature. Policy should embrace all the influential elements within the relevant policy areas, to allow these to act in a mutually reinforcing way. Within public authorities, coordinating services can forge links between different departments, and regional and local authorities, to identify priorities and ensure a coherent approach.' The Green Paper is intended to stimulate debate amongst stakeholders. Responses are due by the end of June 2003. In an interview for the February 2003 issue of Euroabstracts (Broadening the approach to innovation), Edward Phillips, deputy head of the Commission's Innovation Policy Unit, said that it is important to establish how the Union's innovation performance can be improved: 'Possibly at the moment we do not know enough about how innovation works in the European context, so we need to do more work to find out what could usefully and legitimately be done at EU level that would have a positive effect on innovation in the Member States. Once that is done we can see how it can be translated into policy actions.' In the middle of March 2003, the Commission published the Third European Report on Science & Technology Indicators. It painted a gloomy picture of research in the EU, revealing that European companies were filing fewer patent applications than their competitors, and that spending on R&D was far below the level of Japan and the United States: in 2000, the EU invested 1.94% of its Gross Domestic Product on research; the figures for Japan and the US were 2.98% and 2.80% respectively (see EU research performance: substantial progress but important challenges need to be addressed). On 11 March 2003, just prior to the Spring European Council, the Commission adopted a further Communication, this time focusing on how innovation policy might be updated to meet the demands of the Lisbon Strategy. Innovation policy: updating the Union's approach in the context of the Lisbon strategy seeks to political support for developing a new innovation policy. Whilst acknowledging that progress towards Lisbon is hampered by 'weaknesses in organisational, presentational, value-added and business model innovation [which] are as relevant to the slow pace of progress - as is the evidently low level of R&D spending' the Communication identifies three key dimensions to policy-making which should be targeted to help improve the situation: policy governance, sector-specific factors and interaction with other policy areas. Speaking about the report, Commissioner Erkki Liikanen described innovation as 'an omnipresent driver for growth'. Innovation Tomorrow Many of the issues addressed in the various Communications issued over the past few years are revisited in Innovation Tomorrow, a report compiled for the Commission in 2002, but not publicised until April 2003. The main thesis of Innovation Tomorrow is that the development of a knowledge-based economy demands a new approach to innovation. The report argues for a 'third generation' innovation policy, in which innovation is central to the various policies concerned with promoting economic growth in the EU. It identifies three 'generations' of innovation policy:
The Commission sees the challenge for third generation innovation policy as being 'to maintain a core emphasis on innovation across the board' - identifying and involving key stakeholders, and developing mechanisms for pooling knowledge, learning from experience and evidence, and for enhancing coordination of policy initiatives. 'Elements of this third generation policy are visible' says the Commission, 'but further development of the key ideas should be a strategic goal.' Innovation policy in Europe is mostly managed at national and regional levels, and the Communication looks at how the Union's diverse approaches might best be harnessed. It includes three case studies which illustrate the role of government in stimulating innovation: an innovative R&D tax credit scheme introduced in the UK; a partnership between Nokia and a university in Finland's Oulu region, supported by the government; the Catalan Innovation Action Plan, in which an administrative framework encourages innovation. An annex to the Communication lists current initiatives intended to promote innovation in the EU. Further information within European Sources Online:
Eric Davies The European Commission published a Communication on 8 April 2003 entitled 'Innovation Tomorrow' intended to increase the effectiveness of the EU's innovation policy. |
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