Europe INNOVA Liege Conference 2010 - Proceedings Report
The third Europe INNOVA Conference "Reshaping Europe - Addressing Societal Challenges through Entrepreneurship and Innovation" took place on 27-29 October 2010 in Liege (Belgium).
The proceedings report is now available here
Reshaping Europe in the face of an economic crisis
The 3rd Europe INNOVA Conference focused on Reshaping Europe by addressing societal challenges through entrepreneurship and innovation. This successful three day event took place in Liège at the end of October. It was organised by the Region of Wallonia, within the framework of the Belgian Presidency, and working in close cooperation with the European Commission’s DG Enterprise and Industry.
The conference started with three hands-on innovation tours that included visits to local clusters ranging from worldwide mining concerns, through high-tech audio-visual companies to aerospace corporations. A common theme that emerged from all of these tours was the ease with which a member company of a cluster is able to contact, share knowledge and create partnerships with other local or regional organisations. Clusters have close links with universities, research centres and private companies and this cluster network facilitates new synergies, improves company capacities, increases investments in industrial projects, and supports the development of highly qualified personnel.
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Europe INNOVA Conference 2010 – Where do we go from here? - Day 3
The final day began to look at the immediate future for innovation. It started with an Innovation Quiz, which was more of an Opinion Poll, as the Commission wanted to get the views of the experienced innovation practitioners in the audience on the most suitable measures or policies that it might promote. Three possible options were offered each time and decided upon by electronic voting. To view the results of the voting just click here.
Peter Dröll, Head of Unit of the Policy Division at DG Enterprise and Industry, then spoke about ‘Reinforcing the innovation capacity of SMEs.’ He explained that Innovation is not something that can be imposed by government or the EU. However, he went on to outline the wide range of measures and policies that the EU provides to promote innovation in SMEs. He concluded that “We have learned the lessons of the past where we were not really able to monitor the performance impact of our policies. It is important that we all agree what the main barriers are, what the tools are and how to implement them best.”
Henri Monceau, Chief of Staff in the Cabinet of Minister Marcourt then presented the ‘Creative Wallonia’ project. He explained that over the last decade or two, clusters had been instrumental in rebuilding and restructuring the region’s economy. However, he felt it was now time to think about taking this further, “as innovation is not just a good idea and it is important to demonstrate its capacity to transform reality for the whole society.” Thus, education was a vital plank in Creative Wallonia’s platform. This included better educational provision in terms of creativity and innovation for future managers, creative programmes for the training of teachers, including those at university level, and developing creativity and innovation through life-long learning.
Just before the coffee break, the conference went back to electronic voting to judge the responses of three experts to questions on what are the most promising innovation-driver areas and also how to foster the emergence of these innovation-driver markets? The experts were Jos B. Peeters, Founder of Capricorn Venture Partners, Malgorzata Starczewska-Krzysztoszek, Chief Economist at the Polish Conference of Private Employers and Henri Monceau. Henri proved to be the winner, as the audience seemed to welcome his holistic approach and also his emphasis on the need to improve entrepreneurial education, which had been a reoccurring topic over the three days of the conference.
To read more about this last day of the conference, click here
Europe INNOVA Conference 2010 – Delving deeper into issues - Day 2
Day two began with an array of speakers and presentations that addressed major aspects of innovation policy and also the three central themes of the conference:
- Unlocking creative potential;
- Greening industries; and
- Supporting innovative entrepreneurship
The main theme surrounding each aspect was summarised concisely by the conference moderator, Cathy Smith, who noted that the purpose of the forum was to answer one major question, namely “How to get innovation right?”
Jean-Claude Marcourt, of the Belgian EU Presidency and Walloon Minister for Economy, opened the debate by highlighting the importance of innovation in his policy address. “We live in a landscape of permanent change and it is our duty to innovate. It is the answer to re-boosting the competitiveness of the EU,” he said, and added that “regions are the best possible unit to face the challenge of innovation.”
Heinz Zourek, Director General for Enterprise and Industry, again stressed the important role that innovation can play in achieving the pre-crisis levels of output. He also outlined why this Europe INNOVA Conference was so important. “It is simply that if we, at the Commission, don’t get a push from you we will not move ahead,” he said, and continued “also if we don’t get sufficient evidence from you, we will have a tough time convincing Member States that they should give us the means and the budget to promote innovation and growth at European level.”
Speaking on unlocking creativity, Benoit Macq of the Catholic University of Louvain underlined the importance of the three main pillars of universities, public authorities and private enterprise, as he believed that “if these work well together, they create the innovative architecture.” Wallonia’s experience of non-profit clusters has created “new research and has brought new life-saving products like lung and skin cancer vaccinations,” he said underlining his region’s success.
Kornelis Blok, Scientific Director of Ecofys in the Netherlands outlined how the eco-sector was very different from other sectors as it must achieve very ambitious targets by 2020. In order to do so, Mr Blok maintained that eco-innovation must come through the introduction of new technologies into energy efficiency.
Marianna Lubanski, Business Development Director Grundfos Management of Denmark, then took the floor to discuss the support of innovative entrepreneurship. She was certain that if European entrepreneurship was to catch up with the US, “Competence rather than nationality, solutions rather than technology, and flexibility to market conditions must become the key new drivers.”
The parallel sessions that followed in the afternoon gave members of the audience an opportunity to choose their main topics of interest and listen and interact with both the speakers and other members of the audience. Meanwhile mind mapping exercises summarised the discussions in an organic manner providing direct feedback and a live visual representation of the discussions.
The evening ended with a Gala Dinner in the unlikely, but architecturally stunning, venue of the Liège-Guillemins Railway Station, where a member of SKYWIN, WSLlux, was officially granted the status of a European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre.
To find out more about the presentations and discussions during this second day, please click here.
Launching Europe INNOVA 2010
The Europe INNOVA Conference 2010 was launched in Liège yesterday by the Belgian Region of Wallonia. Wallonia is one of the three federal regions of Belgium and is autonomous in policy areas such as economic development, training, applied scientific research, transport and regional development. The first day of the conference kicked-off with participants being treated to three separate ‘innovation tours’ that reflected many of these policy areas. The three tours involved visits to local companies that ranged from worldwide mining concerns to other-worldly aerospace companies.
The SKYWIN scientific park has an array of companies that are at the forefront of aerospace technology. CSL, a leader in space technology and research, displayed its facilities that are able to recreate vacuum conditions and near-absolute zero degree temperatures so that satellite equipment can be tested in simulated space environments. A tour of the AMOS grounds included high-tech optical solutions for some of the world’s largest telescopes, and SAMTECH showcased Computer Engineering Software that virtually recreates mechanical infrastructure to test and simulate structural mechanisms for industry heavyweights such as Airbus.
One common theme of the presentations was the ease with which each company is able to contact, share and create partnerships with other organisations in their locality or region. Each of these innovative organisations is closely tied to universities, research centres and private companies that facilitate the creation of new synergies, improve company capacities, increase investments in industrial projects and support the development of highly-qualified personnel. However, one company director complained that “good welders are more difficult to find than good engineers.”
If you would like to find out about the debates and discussions on the second day of the conference please revisit this web site tomorrow.
