EU investments in innovation should increase

‘Cuts in the budget for innovation are wrong,’ told European Commissioner for Research & Innovation last week in Brussels. ‘How can you, in a Europe that wants to be first class? What an amazing opportunity we have in Europe if we keep going the way we know is right,’ the Commissioner said. ‘We can really be leaders today [because] there are other parts of the world that don’t want to be leaders.’ By cutting research, Europe would cede an opportunity to move ahead of science-sceptical nations, Moedas added. Read more on the Amsterdam Economic Board website.

https://www.amsterdameconomicboard.com/en/nieuws/why-eu-investments-innovation-should-increase

1 Comment

Herman van den Bosch on September 14th 2017 - 11:31

Everybody will admit that the decision to invest has to be justified by insight in the ROI. I am afraid that pleading for investments in innovation has become asking for a wild card to spend money, believing that some results will appear automatically One of the best things the EU has done ever with respect to innovation was taking societal challenges, like transport, health and energy as points of department for thinking of innovation. What went wrong is that investments in innovation within within these domains do not run parallel with investments in these domains. With other world there is a huge gap between investments in the development of innovative products and services and the markets for these products and services. In a country like China such a gap does not exist, at least in domains like transportation, energy and water. As a consequence, innovation will thrive if a clear link is established between investments in innovation and investments in corresponding societal domains.

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