Mission: create an ‘i-conomy’
The European commissioner for research, innovation and science says that output is just as important as economic input to boost innovation in the EU.
The current European Commission is the first to have a commissioner with specific responsibility for innovation. But is this just a gimmicky re-branding of the science and research portfolio?
Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the Irish woman with the title, does not think so. “It is the first time that research and innovation has become so central to the agenda of the European Commission,” she told European Voice. Geoghegan-Quinn leads the ‘cluster’ of commissioners responsible for innovation, a group that has been charged by José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, with drawing up a research and innovation plan to be discussed by EU leaders at their autumn summit.
Innovation has top billing in the EU’s new ‘2020’ strategy for growth, which promises action to stimulate innovation on climate change, energy, health and demographic change. Geoghegan-Quinn points out that Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president, agrees it is a priority. “I am in a unique position to have all of that back-up and support,” she says.
Member-state backing
The former Irish minister is convinced that the high-level interest will preserve her policies from the unhappy fate of earlier big targets for innovation that were never met. The economic crisis has also changed the way that governments think about this policy, she argues.
“The member states see this as the way to go. And if we all work together we can deliver,” she says confidently, citing Ireland’s own innovation plan as a direct response to the Commission’s call to use innovation as the path to recovery.
But general consensus on the merits of innovation does not amount to EU agreement on priorities. Geoghegan-Quinn concedes that there has always been resistance to the target of 3% of gross domestic product for research and development expenditure – although she adds that research ministers welcomed the protection that the EU’s 3% target afforded when finance ministers were looking for cuts.
One of the principal reservations about a 3% target is that it focuses too much on the input of spending, and not enough on the output of tangible results. Sensitive to these criticisms, Geoghegan-Quinn is to ask a panel of economists and business leaders to design an innovation indicator – a metric to capture the innovation performance of a country or region, which will embrace everything, from ‘frontier’ research to success in turning out marketable products. “That will satisfy a lot of the concerns of member states,” she says.
She has set an agenda to create an “innovation union”, or what she calls an “i-conomy”, but much of its content will be familiar to long-term followers of EU research policy. Top of her priority list is the completion of the European Research Area, a single market for EU research that enables scientists to move easily between member states. The commissioner also wants greater university collaboration to avoid duplication. “When I was getting ready for my hearing in the [European] Parliament I discovered to my horror that there were 72 different pieces of research being done into the same salmonella bacteria,” she says.
Access to capital
She recognises that access to capital is a problem, especially for smaller firms – and the Commission wants the European Investment Bank to provide seed capital for companies of this size to help them with new projects.
But much of her policy is still work in progress. The big challenge for the EU is turning scientific advances into marketable innovations. The commissioner plans a fact-finding trip to the United States to learn from its success in “disruptive innovation” of the kind that generated companies such as Google. She admits to some uncertainty about why Europe lags behind, but suggests that cultural attitudes play a role. “Maybe Americans are more used to risk-taking, maybe in Europe if we take a risk and fail, people frown on that.”