Recent events
3rd European Innovation Summit with strong JIIP contribution – 10-12 October 2011
As in the two previous years, JIIP was once again an official Partner of the 3rd European Innovation Summit (3rd EIS), this year with the title: “Towards a European Innovation Eco-System”. The EIS is organised annually by Knowledge4Innovation (K4I), a multi-stakeholder platform of which JIIP is a founding member and outgoing JIIP Director Jos Leijten the President until end of 2011. This year’s EIS was co-organised with the Polish EU Presidency and was split in two parts and two different locations: The first part took place on 10 and 11 October in Warsaw and the second part on 11 and 12 October in the European Parliament in Brussels.
The first part in Warsaw focused on the questions of how EU research and innovation policies can best be adapted to national and regional contexts and of how synergies between different policy areas and policy levels can be increased. Jan Wester, Principal Strategist at TNO, participated as a speaker in a session on “Regional Smart Specialisation”, where he presented the “Vanguard Regions” initiative in which Friesland, Helsinki region and Catalonia as well as the JIIP partners as “knowledge partners” are involved. Jos Leijten moderated a session on “Building a Joint Approach”, which discussed how different initiatives and actors, such as clusters, technology platforms etc. can work together in order to increase the chances for successful national and regional strategies.
The second part in the European Parliament in Brussels was opened with the session “Europe’s Future Nobel Prize Winners”, with several dozens of secondary school students attending and debating Europe’s need of high-skilled people in the fields of Science and Technology. Other sessions focused on the role and contribution of business in improving Europe’s Innovation Eco-System and on Transatlantic Cooperation. It was concluded with an open “fresh thinking” debate on the future of innovation in Europe.
The outcome of the 3rd EIS was presented by Jos Leijten and other K4I representatives during a specific session at the European Innovation Convention on 6 December in Brussels and will serve as valuable input for the discussion on the important decisions that will be made in the coming 12 months at EU level, such as “Horizon 2020”, Multiannual Financial Framework 2014-2020, Future of Cohesion Policy. These are the seven key messages:
- Regional differentiation is attractive – but be careful to get it right
- Governance systems have to become smarter
- Policy must focus on innovation – not just on research
- Smart policy has to be based on smart evidence
- An innovative Europe needs innovative leadership
- Communication and facilitation are crucial
- Everything depends on winning the war for talent
The full and detailed outcome of the 3rd European Innovation Summit is available on the website of Knowledge4Innovation.
Downloads:
Austrian President Dr. Heinz Fischer speaking to the participants of the workshop
Workshop on Urban Development with Austrian President – 8-9 September 2011
On 8 and 9 September 2011, the JIIP partners organised a workshop titled “Urban Development – Steps ahead” at the VTT premises in Espoo/Helsinki. JIIP researchers convened with representatives of Austrian and Finnish companies, of the Austrian Ministry of Innovation and Technology and of the Austrian Trade Delegation in Finland. Highlight was the visit and a key-note speech by Austrian President Dr. Heinz Fischer, who called the topic of the workshop and the collaboration between the JIIP partners “very timely and [...] exemplary at the European level” (please find the full text of the President’s address here). The topics discussed were current and future challenges of urbanisation in Europe and the question of how research can help to find innovative solutions to these challenges. Key aspect were also several European initiatives in this field in which the JIIP partners are involved, such as the Joint Programming Initiative “Urban Europe” (JPI UE). The participants left with a number of very concrete project ideas, which are going to be further developed in the coming months.
JIIP Annual Symposium – 18 April 2011
Under the title “Making Cities and Regions Fit for Innovation: Research Needs and Policy Perspectives”, the 3rd Annual JIIP Symposium took place on 18 April 2011 in the Diamant Conference Centre in Brussels. Attracting more than 130 registrations, it has been the most successful JIIP symposium so far and showed that the topic and approach were very well chosen.
A summary of the discussions will be available on this page soon. You can already download all presentations in pdf format by clicking on the following links:
1. Phil Cooke (University of Cardiff): “Strange Attractors: Resilience, Relatedness & Emergence of Regional Innovation” – 2. Judith Borsboom (TNO/ JIIP): “Cities as a European challenge” – 3. Matti Kokkala (VTT/ JIIP): “Technology as a Driver of Change” – 4. Olga Ivanova (TNO/ JIIP): “Regional Performance and Regional Competitiveness in Europe” - 5. Begoña Sanchez (Tecnalia/ JIIP): “Theory and Practice of Cluster Policies” – 6. Wolfgang Polt (Joanneum Research/ JIIP): “Innovative Cities and Regions, the Research Challenges”.
JIIP 2011 Winter School – 17-18 March 2011
On 17 and 18 March 2011, JIIP held its traditional annual “School”, this time in Espoo/Helsinki. 30 JIIP researchers from all four partner organisations came in order to discuss the conditions, dynamics and challenges of innovative cities and regions in Europe. After an inspiring keynote speech by Mika Kautonen from the University of Tampere, the discussions then focused on four different “city images”: Pioneer Cities, Connected Cities, Entrepreneurial Cities and Liveable Cities. The insights and ideas that were developed and exchanged fed directly into the preparation of the subsequent annual JIIP symposium (which took place on 18 April 2011 in Brussels). They will also prepare JIIP even better for future work in the context of the EU’s “Urban Europe” Joint Programming Initiative.
Sectoral Innovation Watch – Final conference – 24 February 2011
On 24 February 2011, the Commission-funded project “Sectoral Innovation Watch” was concluded with a final conference titled “Dynamics in Sectoral Innovation: Impact on Value Chains and Policy Implications?”. It presented sectoral analyses of innovation systems and discussed the common trends across industrial sectors, focusing on emerging and key enabling technologies, vertical integration into global value chains, inter-penetration of services in manufacturing and eco-innovation. Moreover, the participants debated the implications for industrial innovation policy, especially addressing EU support for industrial innovation, smart specialisation, internationalization and related aspects of industrial innovation policy.
Conclusions and other materials will be available on this page soon.
2nd European Innovation Summit – 11-12 October 2010
As in 2009, JIIP was again an active Partner of the 2nd European Innovation Summit (EIS), which took place on 11 and 12 October 2010 in the European Parliament in Brussels. With 500 participating stakeholders from all sectors and policy-makers from all over Europe, the annual conference can now firmly be regarded as the innovation policy-related event at EU level. This year, the focus was on the different “Grand Challenges” and on the question which policy measures are needed in order to support innovations that help tackling these challenges.
JIIP Director Jos Leijten, who is also the President of Knowledge4Innovation (K4I), the organiser of the EIS, moderated the session “Europe’s Innovation Challenge”. It set the scene for the sessions that followed and was the perfect occasion to discuss the “Innovation Union” Communication of the European Commission, which had just been published a few days beforehand. Click here for more information on content, speakers, highlights and outcome.
JIIP 2010 Summer School – 10-11 June 2010
On 11 and 12 June 2010, 18 JIIP researchers from all four partner organisations gathered in Brussels for the 2010 JIIP Summer School. One of the main goals was to jointly and proactively start to develop our capabilities on a number of topics. This included the following thematic areas: “Microdata and Measurement”, “Policies”, “Future of RTOs”, “Foresight” and “Joint Programming”. On this basis, a number of collaboration projects have been defined and several working groups will now continue to work on these topics.
JIIP Annual Symposium “The future of sectoral innovation” – 19 April 2010
Even though the Icelandic volcano managed to bring European air travel to a complete standstill and to keep JIIP director Jos Leijten from returning from Asia in time, the JIIP Symposium on “The future of sectoral innovation” on 19 April 2010 in Brussels took place and can be considered a good success. Several speakers who could not be there in person were connected to the conference through VoIP, so the participants were not only able to see and listen to almost all the scheduled presentations but also to ask questions and engage in discussions with the respective speakers afterwards.
Innovation in Aerospace was one of the very topical issues debated in the first session, in which sector experts discussed and compared innovation in their respective industry. The second session focused on “lessons learned” and cross-cutting issues and included presentations by project managers and Commission representatives. All presentations are now available for download below, a written report will follow soon.
1. Michael Ploder (Automotive) – 2. Matti Kokkala (Construction) – 3. Gernot Klotz (Chemical Industry) – 4. Luis Rubalcaba (Services) – 5. Annelieke van der Giessen (Aerospace) – 6. José Maria Lazaro (Food) – 7. Michele Cincera (Corporate R&D) – 8. Govert Gijsbers (Future Jobs & Skills) - 9. Henriëtte van Eijl (Lead markets) - 10. Fernando Diaz Lopez (Eco-Innovation) – 11. Carlos Montalvo (SIW)