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Along with the increasing popularity of the technology debate in Austria during the last years and after numerous discussions with ICT researchers in the Centrope countries I realised that there is a striking resemblance in their complaints, although the statements themselves express the respective opposite. See also http://noweurope.com/2009/09/08/barriers-cooperation/#more-1293 by Vlastimil.

Simply speaking, the Austrians complain that there’s not enough money for basic research as all goes to applied research, whereas the Czech and Slovak Republics as well as Hungary (representing the situation in virtually all new EU member states and beyond) complain that universities concentrate too much on basic research and do not understand the importance of applied research. Continue reading ‘Basic vs. applied research: Potentials unused?’

IST Austria www.ist-austria.ac.at, Austria’s new center for excellence in research, has been a controversy for years. One of its original proponents, Anton Zeilinger, one of the world’s top researchers in quantum computing, has withdrawn from the project when it became clear that politics started to dominate the debate and “excellence” was abused as a euphemism for “I want some new research stuff in my province”.

Continue reading ‘IST Austria opened: „Excellent“ topping on research coffee?’

Recently Ivo Spigel (Welcome!) opened one of his posts stating “We’re all used to the fact that most trends, paradigm shifts and business model disruptions originate in the US, and then, sometimes quickly and sometimes more slowly, make their way across the Atlantic, first to Western and then gradually to Central and Eastern Europe.”

This made me think. Not that I wasn’t aware of it, on the contrary. All those EU-sceptics should have a look at a world map – the US, China, Russia dominate it, and then there’s Europe with its pretty little gardens, well fenced in, enormously self confident when it comes to questions about “sovereignty” and stuff. When it comes to global questions, though, there’s a lot of hot air, but rarely solutions.

Anyway, that’s not my topic. My topic is Ivo’s introduction: “We’re all used to the fact…”. Although the paradigms have changed slightly (GSM came from Europe, etc), our minds are programmed to accept and adopt anything that’s labelled as “glamorous” from across the Atlantic.

Continue reading ‘Against the windmills In Europe’s minds’

The European Commission has declared 2009 the Year of Creativity and Innovation. At a conference taking place today in Brussels, participants discussed whether and how EU-funded projects could contribute to increasing European innovation.

The discussion is particularly relevent in the context of European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering’s statement, last week, that the Commission intends to increase its budget for research-related projects in 2013-2021.

“I have always been a strong supporter of the 7th EU Research and Technology programme. I can assure you all here today that this programme is here to stay and I would be confident that for the next EU Financial Perspective 2013-2021, the European Union will allocate an even greater proportion of the EU annual budget for research, technology and research programmes,” said the Parliament president.

Mr Pöttering added that innovation would be key to Europe’s recovery from the current financial crisis.

There’s no question that the US is in trouble. 50% of the US mortgage banks do not run under Federal control – no further comment on this.

The car industry is one of the industries that obviously has been hit hardest after the banks. Europe and the rest of the world can feel it and the situation will worsen. With the car industry a range of drive by wire suppliers and other related businesses will suffer.

The ICT industry in general will suffer, this time, unlike after the millennium, it is those companies that so far have been immune to new economy stuff. Austria’s ICT industry has quite a share in industrial ICT on an international level.

But, and that’s my point, if we all scream crisis, we will of course have one.

Continue reading ‘A Crisis is a Crisis is a Crisis – or is it?’

The fourth edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), published on 24 November 2004, confirmed previous years’ results: Sweden and Finland are the most innovative countries of the European Union and Estonia and Slovenia are leaders of the ten new Member States.

Through 20 indicators, measuring human resources, the creation of new knowledge, the transmission and application of knowledge, and innovation finance, the ESI, established by the European Commission as part of the Lisbon strategy, compares innovation performance within the EU Member States. A composite indicator provides an overview of national performances.

The scoreboard also looks at four aspects of non-technical innovation:

o Non-technical change,
o Implementation of changed organisational structures,
o Implementation of advanced management techniques,
o Implementation of significant changes to aesthetic appearance.

Main observations

Sweden and Finland maintain their leadership positions. Germany and Denmark are performing well above the EU average, with Denmark moving ahead quickly. Netherlands, Ireland and France are slowing down and most of the new EU Member States seem to be catching up.

Luxembourg performs best in three out of the four categories relating to the non-technical aspects of innovation. Germany comes second in all four. Several countries considered as average or poor performers on the overall scoreboard, such as Luxembourg, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Estonia and Slovenia, perform much better according to the indicators for non-technical change.

This reflects, according to EIS, a “substantial changes to organisation and management, as part of a modernisation process, that may provide the necessary foundation for both an increase in per capita GDP and the capacity to innovate”.

EIS indicates that the gap between the EU and the US and Japan remains constant. The gap between the EU and the US is explained by three indicators: patents, percentage of the working population with tertiary education and research expenditure.

Perspectives

The EIS working paper will be used to identify the main innovation policy changes, needed in order to reach the Lisbon objectives. In this respect, the Commission intends establish a policy dialogue with the Member States to establishing a common framework of innovation policy objectives.

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