Venue: Salon
des Membres,
European Parliament,
60 Rue Wiertz, 1047 Brussels
Europe needs to make a step change in its research and
innovation performance. As the Innovation Union pointed out, this
requires that research and innovation be better linked. Breaking away
from traditional compartmentalised approaches, the EU should focus more
on challenges and outcomes to be achieved, linking the research and
innovation funding
more
closely
to the policy objectives. To help achieve the ambitious goals of the
Europe 2020 Strategy, the Innovation Union must involve all regions thus
avoiding an innovation divide between the strongest innovating regions
and the others.
In the Friuli
Venezia Giulia Region, AREA’s Innovation Management System has at its
core “Innovation Network”, a regionally funded project which in recent
years has led to a direct positive impact in both occupation and
revenues for the companies who have participated. The program has led to
numerous innovation projects, which in turn have created new products
and processes and successful patents. The secret of this success the
application of a straightforward methodology in which trained technology
brokers from specialist competence centers interact with entrepreneurs
to identify innovation opportunities. They identify the right
competences in the local or extended research community to address the
projects needs and then work with the business and the researchers,
following the innovation project through to its final conclusion. This
model has now been successfully contextualized in the southern Italian
region of Basilicata and could also be applied elsewhere in Europe if
the right funding model were in place.
The model not only leads to successful innovation projects but to the
creation and continuous improvement of a highly skilled regional
infrastructure linking the business and research communities.
The Tuscany
Region has also developed a series of innovative services to strengthen
the competitiveness of SMEs. These include efficient instruments for the
valorization of intellectual property that represent a rare example of
IP merchant banking in Europe.
The debate focused on different research and innovation funding tools developed at
the regional level across the EU and promoted best practices to
foster growth and competitiveness in line with the Innovation Union
policy.
Welcome and Introduction
Lambert Van
Nistelrooij,
MEP, Member of
the Committee on Regional Development, Member of the Delegation for
relations with the countries of South Asia, Chair of the K4I Forum of
the European Parliament Governing Board
Guest Speakers
Keith Sequeira,
Policy Officer,
Framework Programme and Simplification, DG Research and Innovation,
European Commission
Stephen Taylor,
Director of
Technology Transfer, AREA Science Park, Trieste
Giancarlo
Migliori,
CEO of
MrgoodIDEA (Italian Partner of Ocean Tomo)