EU - The Innovation Union

As posted earlier, the European Commission has announced the Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative Innovation Union.

In the introduction it announces that this document will focus on a broad based definition of innovation (not limited to R&D-driven innovation) and will be an inclusive of all actors (public bodies, civil society and not only limited to high-tech companies). A very good intention.

Unfortunately, more than half of the remaining document focus on issues of R&D-driven high tech companies, like:

+ Creation of a European patent
+ Establishment of a European Research Area
+ Better collaboration between science & industry
+ More investments in R&D
+ European Institute of Innovation and Technology that focuses on Knowledge Intensive Clusters (KIC)
+ Better and more effective collaborative research and knowledge transfer
+ Attract world class researchers
+ Create Knowledge Alliances between education and business

Only a small number of initiatives go beyond this narrow focus:

+ Access to finance for SMEs, including more Venture Capital
+ Innovative public procurement
+ Innovation Partnerships that focus on societal challenges
+ European Social Innovation Pilot (focus on societal innovation initiatives)

These last two initiatives seem the only through new ideas presented in the document and both have the ambition to look beyond the traditional view on innovation as R&D driven and focused on competitiveness only. I support these new ideas, but at the same time have to say that new initiatives without the discontinuation of old initiatives create an overload of public initiatives that lack effectiveness and focus. Therefore I would suggest that any new public initiative can only be launched when at the same time the discontinuation of an old initiative is announced in order to create the 'creative destruction' that is necessary to make space for new initiatives.

Also the section focusing on creativity, design and creative industries (without making a distinction between these concepts) contains more than half its length on IPR-issues, apparently lacking the understanding of what is non-technological innovation.

The whole service sector (70% of European economy) is only mentioned as containing only a small section of knowledge intensive companies. The role of service innovation is overlooked in the whole document.

Also the role of non high-tech (often traditional) manufacturing is not mentioned. Their needs to face challenges of competitiveness, environmental and social standards are completely overlooked.

In summary, it seems that the document does not fulfill its promises of going beyond the traditional understanding of innovation as measured in R&D efforts and growth of high-tech industry, but some small baby steps into new directions are made.