A European Commission sponsored panel of top-ranking business leaders this week launched a fascinating online debate on future EU innovation policy . Entitled Re-invent Europe through innovation, the panel makes the case "for an innovation society where knowledge is utilised rapidly and powerfully for societal benefit and development. This goal requires a systematic transformation from fragmented, single issue, closed approaches favouring large incumbents to networked, flexible and open approaches favouring new entrants and ideas". It is a thought provoking agenda, and is timely given President Barroso 's recent call for "a radical transformation towards a knowledge-based society". Google is not on the panel, which includes representatives from manufacturing companies such as Kone, financial institutions such as the Czech bank CSOB as well as Cisco from the technology side. But we welcome the agenda and the tenor of the discussion. It echoes our own call for the European Union to adopt a Fifth Freedom for knowledge to the Treaty of Rome's original four freedoms. We strongly agree, for example, with the paper's effort to puts the issue of investment in infrastructure in a broader context - "broadband is not simply a new communication line but a new social infrastructure that is a pre-requisite for future innovation". Of course, praise alone is of only limited use, and there are some issues where the panel would ideally have said more. Intellectual property is always a sensitive topic, and it is covered only in a delphic fashion. Likewise, while there's much focus on how government spends money to support innovation, there's little discussion of how the Internet has enabled grass-roots innovation precisely because - as the report states - public financing is frequently "directed to incumbents in mature industries". More than public financing, judicious public policy is required for intellectual property regimes to support innovation based mass-collaboration. The panel also expresses a frequently heard concern that "ideas generated here [in Europe] are developed more successfully by others elsewhere." Unfortunately, but the panel extrapolate this logic into the new economy and in particular "social innovations to address climate change, aging and other major challenges". Yet one of the hallmarks of the knowledge economy is the emphasis on sharing, and we need to understand that sharing information may be the socially optimal policy to meet a global challenge such as climate change. Posted by Simon Hampton, European Public Policy Director
I like the idea but found the implementation a bit disappointing. The initiative seems to claim for openness but then seem to be more about disseminating than listening. Some remarks here: http://egov20.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/eu-consultation-on-innovation-policy-struggling-to-be-web2-0/
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