The US challenge for Europe (Le défi Americain ?) is to find out why Europe has so much difficulty to translate research into innovation. The FT publishes a series on Reforming Europe, and this week they deal with Research and Development. Grenoble is bidding to become a "centre of competitiveness" for the French Finance Ministry. A few remarks of academics and professionals, concerning the weakness of Europe's innovation, I would like to share with you.
Gerard Kleisterlee (Chairman of Philips) says: "In effect, there is little wrong with the knowledge infrastructure in western Europe. In many ways it is still unsurpassed. Our educational establishments, our universities are among the very best in the world. We just need to capitalise on them more effectively by introducing entrepreneurial vision." Nevertheless, also Philips is increasingly withdrawing R&D from their home country the Netherlands.
Daniel Janssen, Chairman of Solvay, argues that EU universities are almost all very provincial and they often act late. The best in the US are globally competitive: they look for the best brains and best solutions for the world.
Stefan Marcinowksi, responsible for research at BASF, says that it is crucial to talk less about money and more about the (operating) environment and making Europe an attractive place to invest in R&D. And there we get to a point, I think.
The European Union spends a lot of money in R&D via different research programs, both supporting the universities and the industries. But as the Court of Auditors (the EU spending watchdog) suggests in their 2003 report, the complex management processes involved and the "fragmented programmes" lead to dilution of responsibilities.
Georges Haour, professer at IMD summarizes it nice in my opinion. "It is an area where you can invest an enormous amount of money and nothing comes out, and sometimes you can spend almost no money and yet you get a breakthrough. What is crucial is encouraging 'curiosity driven research', which is not about specific commercial applications but is long term."
Do innovation and overstructured research effort complement ? Shouldn't we stop doing "re"-search and start developing "search" ?
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