Europe INNOVA - Partnerships for better innovation support

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Europe INNOVA Conference 2010

Reshaping Europe
Addressing Societal Challenges through Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Palais des Congrès (Esplanade de l’Europe, 2, 4020 Liège)
Liège, Belgium - 27-29 October 2010

The 3rd Europe INNOVA Conference is being organised by the Region of Wallonia in the framework of the Belgian Presidency of the European Union, in close collaboration with the European Commission’s DG Enterprise and Industry. In the context of the Europe 2020 Strategy, the conference will address policy priorities for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and reflect on how innovation can support the transition towards a resource efficient and competitive economy.
Over the past couple of years, Europe, and the rest of the world, has faced an unprecedented crisis affecting all sectors of the economy. The crisis and the recovery that is now taking place in most Member States provide an opportunity that can be used to reshape Europe and to ensure that it is stronger and better prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. The Europe 2020 Strategy is designed to improve the business environment. It is vital that this environment offers the framework conditions to turn ideas into products and services more quickly and easily, whilst addressing environmental concerns and making efficient use of resources. At this important turning point, the Europe INNOVA Conference will provide a timely opportunity to determine how innovation policy and innovation support can help Europe and its enterprises, both large and small, to best face these challenges.

The conference will bring together the Europe INNOVA Community with key innovation stakeholders from the worlds of politics, academia and business. The discussions will focus on three areas of particular importance for addressing the societal challenges Europe is facing:

• Unlocking Europe’s Creative Potential - Creativity is a key ingredient in innovation and entrepreneurship, but creative ideas often fail to reach the market. Creativity needs to be stimulated and diffused in all sectors of the economy through services that strengthen the innovation chain and offer access to all forms of innovation support;
• Greening Industries - One key objective of Europe 2020 is to address climate change and promote resource efficiency by decoupling economic growth from resource and energy use. In order to maintain and increase Europe’s competitiveness, enterprises need support to become greener and more resource and energy efficient. This can, in particular, be achieved through eco-innovation embracing all types of ‘greening measures’ from introducing new products and services to enhancing processes and organisational settings;
• Supporting Innovative Entrepreneurship - In the specific context of the recent crisis, entreprises and especially SMEs need to adapt, and sometimes even rethink, their entire approach to their business This requires a framework that supports and guides SMEs, improves their access to affordable finance, extends their innovation management capacities and develops their innovative and entrepreneurial cultures.

• Technologies for Image, Sound and Text (TWIST cluster)
• Space industry and space-based services (SKYWIN cluster)
• Eco-innovation in the metallurgic sector (MECATECH cluster)
  

Innovation workshop: Invest in Med

Keynote addresses

Getting innovation right: What is the role and importance of user-driven innovation and what might be relevant policy approaches, measures and actions, particularly at European level.

• Kirsten Bound, Lead Policy Advisor, Innovation, Investment and Growth - National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), UK
• Benoît Hucq, President, Infopôle Cluster TIC & Executive Director, Océ Software Laboratories Namur, BE
• Yolanda Smits, Senior consultant, KEA European Affairs
• Luigi Perissich, Director, Confindustria Innovative and Technological Services, IT

‘Innovative Intermezzo’: Projection of 3D-stereo images

• Jos B. Peeters, Founder & Managing Partner, Capricorn Venture Partners NV, BE
• Henri Monceau, Chief of Staff - Creativity, Innovation, New Technologies & ICT, Cabinet of Minister Marcourt, Region of Wallonia, BE
  
• Christoph Kuhn, European Investment Bank (EIB)
  
• Małgorzata Starczewska-Krzysztoszek, Chief Economist, Director of the Department of Research and Economic Analyses, Polish Confederation of Private Employers – Lewiatan, PL