Creating an Innovative Europe

Creating an Innovative Europe

Our proposal is to create in Europe a market that stimulates and

encourages innovation and in so doing provides firms with the

incentive to raise their R&D level and to apply successfully the full

range of new technologies.

1. Strategy and the need for action

This report presents a strategy to create an Innovative Europe along with

the concrete steps needed to implement that strategy. The course of

action we shall propose is simple but its application is complex and

requires a huge act of will and commitment from political, business and

social leaders. It is a route which resonates strongly with the origins of the

European Union as a Common Market and with one of its greatest

achievements, the drive towards the Single Market.

Achieving the goal of an Innovative Europe requires a new paradigm of

mobility, flexibility and adaptability to allow R&D and innovation to create

the value that can then support our quality of life. The paradigm shift

cannot be confined to the narrow domain of R&D and innovation policy,

important though that is. Simultaneous and synchronous efforts are

needed at all levels in three areas, which we use to structure this report:

- creation of a market for innovative products and services;

- providing sufficient resources for R&D and innovation; and

- improving the structural mobility and adaptability of Europe.

Cutting across these areas is a fourth which we treat horizontally, being

the necessity for more positive European attitudes and culture towards

entrepreneurship and risk taking.

Why is such a change needed? Europe must break out of structures and

expectations established in the post-WW2 era which leave it today living a

moderately comfortable life on slowly declining capital. This society,

averse to risk and reluctant to change, is in itself alarming but it is also

unsustainable in the face of rising competition from other parts of the

world. For many citizens without work, or in less-favoured regions, even

the claim to comfort is untrue. This report is about putting research and

innovation at the centre of the endeavour to recapture the entrepreneurial

vigour and value-creation that are needed to sustain and improve the

European way of life.

We aim to build upon the achievements and actions already in process

through the revised Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs, the National

Reform Programmes and actions towards the 3% objective, but also to

Europe breaking

out from an

unsustainable

path

Market