Jean-Claude Junker has become the new president of the European Commission and along with his new Commission team has been setting out their priorities for regaining momentum for Europe.

I was re-reading Mr Junker’s policy agenda based on “Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change” and you realise not just the complexity and challenge all this entails, bringing 28 countries along still, it seems, a pathway that still talks “a single union.”

It prompted this post.

My interest here relates clearly to innovation, it touches everything but for it to be achieved and delivered as a new promise, it needs the necessary conditions.

I’m been looking for critical aspects that will signal a healthy or difficult road ahead for Europe, sensing the specific change projects that do give us the new opportunities for growth and jobs, and either a vibrant or stagnated period ahead of us.

Three policy intents stand out as high in innovation possibilities.

Mr Junker sets out his ten policy areas and expects to be judged on the results from achieving progress towards these. Let’s quickly highlight these ten policy thrusts:

Firstly, and I think the overriding need for Europe is to remain competitive, does come from the correct identification of “a Connected Digital Single Market”, then constructing a “Resilient Energy Union” and thirdly “Strengthen the Industrial Base.”

These three policy directions offer real innovation promise. These are where there is a significant innovation, jobs and growth but still lacking, in my opinion, a set of cohesive social directives that we can gather around that make us see why. We are seemingly focusing on the edges and not striking at the ‘heart’ of social issues that Europe needs to address.

Other policy intents outlined

There are statements of “a deeper and fairer internal market”, the wish to “converge economic, fiscal and labour market policies”, the quest for a “balanced free trade agreement with the U.S” and a “Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy” but these have a more economic ring to them but lack substantive outcomes.

Mr Junker raises the political and socially political issues of “Justice and Fundamental Rights”, a wish to have a “New Policy on Migration” but they only play at the edges, important ones without doubt but skirt the social tensions that ‘simmer away’ within Europe.

Are we connecting into or still ignoring the underlying social tensions?
I think when you face the lack of growth; of getting millions of people back into jobs and having “trust in the European project is at a historical low” in Mr Junkers words, I’m not sure we have made the new start for Europe that Mr Junker wants.

He wants to “rebuild bridges” to restore European citizen’s confidence yet he provides in his words “an ambitious Jobs, Growth and Investment Package” of an extra Euro 300 billion into the real economy over the next three years, is that really enough to ‘kick start’ the economies across Europe? This sum might send a signal but it lacks real resolve and boldness.

Much of Mr Junker’s presidency will be determined by his ability to deliver on this. It is going to be a hard fight to find the money as it needs to be added to the existing budgets or he is forced to find this within the existing budgets. That will be determined by the 28 member states and then by the European parliament.

Is this enough, of course not if it stands alone to kick start the economies, but it is a serious amount of money to find at difficult times. As this request has been wrapped up as “additional” I would feel it is going to be tough to achieve, when it does seem to come from a part of Mr Junker’s opening statement in the European Parliament, of “we need smarter investment, more focus, less regulation and more flexibility when it comes to the use of these public funds”. He might find the answer back is “well find it then in what you have.”

Approval of any additional funds opens the door to considerable re-jockeying of hard-won positions already established. All of this will add further to the current ‘disillusionment’ within the EU system if this becomes a public wrangle between the 28 member states. I feel it will be ‘pinched’ from current budgets and that becomes a worry or is simply re-crafted away from general budgets into specifics.

The Horizon 2020 budget might be vulnerable

This is the innovation package of Euro 80 billion to push Industrial leadership (Euro 17 b), Excellence in Science (Euro 24.4 b) and Social Challenges (Euro 29.7b) as the big three pillars. Let’s hope this gets ring-fenced and the call for injecting Euro 300b into the economy over the next three years is on top, not shifting the lines of the budget, as it becomes a considerable infusion, much-needed in this current economic horizon.

The critical messages and debate we need to discuss in Europe lies here

Again in Mr Junker’s own words “Europe is finding it is often ill-prepared for the global challenges ahead, be it with regard to the digital age, the race for innovation and skills, the scarcity of natural resources, the safely of our food, the cost of energy, the impact of climate change, the ageing of our population, or the pain and poverty at Europe’s external borders”

In Mr Junker’s call he believes any additional investment should be directed towards “infrastructure, notably broadband and energy networks, as well as transport infrastructure in industrial centres; education, research and innovation; and in renewable energy”

The intent is to get the “younger generation back to work in decent jobs” with this investment providing for “new, sustainable and job-creating projects that help restore Europe’s competitiveness”

The problem with this is we are not equipping much of the younger generation with the skills for the future jobs, we are locking them into the past and denying them the chance to be exposed to these rapidly changing skills that the industry is arguing are needed.

Here is one real, difficult challenge that will continue to drain away future competitiveness unless it is adequately addressed.

So a new start in Europe or are we seeing just an extension of the existing?

I sense the extending of the existing, I’m not sure I see crafting of a new vision, a new direction, we are still locked into the “decades of European integration” on being the continued, ongoing focus on not to be undone at any price.

I certainly don’t want a radical ‘undoing’ but Mr Junkers “rebuild bridges” I feel is directed at the 28 country entities and not at, and for, the European citizenry. We are caught up in too much national politics and jostling in the European Union and that will eventually ‘come home to roost’

So I’m not sure I buy the new approach, the “New start for Europe.”  I think the incoming commission and Mr Junker might have missed a historical moment for Europe, setting their sights on billion-euro spending and not really making that leap into trillion-euro opportunities – articulating the bigger picture.

There is a real need for an overarching ‘European Ambition’, we  lack a bold new vision.

We still lack real economic enabling ‘ambition’. It is not wrapped up in pursuit of the Union of Countries, as this seems socially unacceptable, it is wrapped up in a “Union of Grand Challenges” that the 28 countries can unite behind for the good of their people.

“Delivering on unifying digital, energy, building infrastructure, moving back to our industrialisation base, built on deep research and development, delivered through innovation, knowledge and education at the core can bring us those trillion-euro opportunities for new jobs and growth“- now that provides the ambition intent I feel.

They are within the policy bases covered by Mr Junker but not in the bold, essential ways we really do need to regain the initiative and regain momentum. He lost the opportunity to create a clear, compelling reason to unite behind these in laying out what this actually does mean to fail on these or what they can give, and by not doing this it might have consigned us to a further period of stuttering, indecisive leadership at the very time it needs to be radically different.

Europe is in crisis, it might not be going away

Europe lacks a forward momentum; it suffers lowering productivity, a growing imbalance between the right jobs and places to focus growth to get the economic growth back.

We seem locked in internal ‘competitive politics’, external lack of competitiveness and regional and national disparities that drag down any commercial outcomes that might improve our performance.

Of course, I wish Mr Junker well and his commissioners, they are not in an enviable place but nor is Europe, we are in a very tough, demanding world where ‘innovation and being competitive’ requires a boldness, an increased sense of what is at stake by not looking in our rear-view mirror but in the future coming towards us.

I just hope we have the capabilities to steer towards this future and not keep pulling over to fix the engine while others continue to pass us, already on cruise control.

The post Lay out the path, get out of the way but give me ambition please. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Dubbed “Innovation Breakthroughs – Igniting Europe’s Growth” They were celebrating 10 years of the opening of the centre and as you arrived, you saw the cranes at work to double the facility as well as further deepen their commitments within the surrounding community even further.

One such community success story has been the co-location they have with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), where both have evolved to share a real philosophy of creating new knowledge and making it available for the industrial innovation process through this partnership.

They combine in a number of “sweet spots” or research domains, that move the academic creative contributions of science into the industrial researchers alongside, working to advance products, bringing these concepts to commercial fruition.

The event also combine with the announcement of Euro €18.5 Million in New Research Program Funding announced as GE Marks the 10th Anniversary of its Global Research Centre in Europe with its university partners. A further community commitment.

Alongside side this announcement, a White Paper was issued on “The State of European Innovation”, drawing down from the GE Innovation Barometer  and other resources.

I have always liked to read with interest this set of Barometer insights,  and have enjoyed commenting upon (here for example) the results that are published each year. The GE Innovation Barometer I think really does offer valuable insights into innovation thinking by over 3,000 leaders in larger business organizations. It offers good insights into the inner thinking about innovation that has practical implications.

A quick tour of the R&D facilities reveals much about a company

While I was there, I was lucky enough to take a “quick” tour of the GE facility after my small contribution to a fascinating set of debates earlier in the day. I can honestly state the passion, commitment and sense of pride in all the researchers I meet were impressive. It goes way, way beyond putting on a positive spin to the visitor, it is a deep desire and I think a real motivation to push advancement.

Before I went to Munich I really got caught up in GE and its evolving story.
From the outside looking into GE I had felt it was evolving but I was not able to get ‘under the hood’ and see the ‘powerful forces’ that seem to be at work. This event helped trigger that growing awareness and brought it significantly to life for me.

GE often use an awful lot of ‘convening words’ that make you curious to connect to their technologies, and their industry areas and explain how and where these are evolving. I think this thinking has been ‘cranking up’ significantly in the past couple of years, and for good reasons. GE has a good evolving story to tell.

Included in their portfolio are some of the essential aspects of our lives, they connect us, connect enterprises and advance many things and reshape the future. When you hear about “mapped minds”, “brilliant factories”, “extreme machines”, “energy everywhere”, “super materials” and finally their take of the “industrial internet” it confronts you. That was how I felt when I walked through the doors into their lobby area.

For me it was going to be a promising day.
Irrespective of how or where I could contribute, I knew I was going to learn a lot from the event. As it turned out the panel I was invited upon became fairly lively.

I had the pleasure of being on a panel that included Mark Little, the Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Office for GE, Jean Botti, the Chief Technical and Innovation Officer for the Airbus Group and Christian Cahn von Seelen, the Head of Corporate Strategy, China and India Business at Skoda Auto.

The audience ranged from politicians, and senior representatives across industry, research institutions and health and the Q & A I felt could have gone on and on, debating Europe’s innovative future. We simply touched the ‘tip of the iceberg as there are equally dangers lurking not just under the surface as complex problems to tackle.

Yet equally, such a positive mass of deep knowledge, real tangible successes and high absorption of learning across Europe, all needs to be picked apart, mapped out and reconnected in new ways, does provide a promising future in innovative ways to get Europe moving again, in growth, jobs and unified commitments. I only wish it was less left in Politicians and Bureaucratic hands and our institutions and business leaders were more deeply involved in shaping the process, not just lobbying for their specific part.

Plenty of pride, some angst.

Sitting in Germany you can always ‘feel’ that real pride, a clear determination and belief in the achievements made and plenty yet to come-

Equally, you know what will be delivered in much of the approaches can be summarized as making connected sense. Sometimes the rest of Europe does seem to want to ‘pull’ in other ways and that is hard to understand from a German’s perspective. This is part of ‘our’ creative tensions in Europe to be bridged.

It is part of the challenges we face in Europe, connecting all the diversity and opinions of 28 countries to get growth and a real momentum within the European economy going again. Debating the required innovation fits across Europe is complex and challenging.

What I liked in my visit was a reminder that if you combine much that is good from one culture and fuse it in thoughtful ways that capitalise on the diversity of the other or across many, you can really see tangible results. Collaborating on big challenges would be one ‘unifier’.

I think the combination of the fusion of the mindsets of an American company that believes it is a scale-based entrepreneur organization, managing complicated technologies and ‘big things’ and a collection of bright researching minds, all drawn from not just across Europe but many parts of the world, sitting next to a university (TUM) that are plugging into the German way of doing things is a good example of this collaborating across big challenges.

Of course, managing complex situations across cultures can be frustrating but this host of ‘connected points’ strikes me to be a winning formula. Of course in GE’s case, you throw in the connected nine Global Research centres you certainly ‘sense’ this motion towards an accelerating future within GE. 2,000 scientists and engineers and 50,000 technologists. It can make you pause for breath, it’s simply impressive, and ‘living proof’ of connecting minds, knowledge, and cultures with machines on how it can generate results that are advancing what we know today in significant ways.

Then we have the wave of connecting minds and machines.

Mark Little the Chief Technology Officer for GE was heading out of the door early afternoon to catch the flight to get him back to GE’s next event, of connecting minds and machines being held the next day. Now this promises a different, potentially radical new future in industry and GE are placing a lot of resource and commitments into it.

GE is taking a real lead here. In the last three years, they have been ramping up their thinking, dubbed “the industrial internet” and moving into the power of connected industrial assets (the machines) through embedding sensor technology everywhere on the machine, bringing back its data from often hostile environments and through the analytics applied can turn this into ‘intelligent information.’

This offers the potential of real-time decision making, delivering required and necessary insights at the right time, to the operators and business decision-makers so as to manage that dreaded aspect all industries fear of “downtime” better. It also allows for managing more efficiently and effectively the assets.

Already I gather GE has put over £1 billion into this potential game-changing move to transform industry. CEO and Chairman Jeff Immelt’s opening to this event with his headline view: “if you went to bed last night as an Industrial company, you are going to wake up in the morning as a software and analytical company” where the separation between data and industry has vanished. Does this change the business model, I think so.

Of course, Jeff Immelt is saying this, he runs a “big bets company” and they are setting about transforming the industry for competitive advantage. Yet again though, it is the way they seem to be setting about it that makes you feel it is happening and shifting the dynamics of big asset business, in significant ways.

Platforms, Partnerships and the Ecosystem

I strongly believe the future of collaboration is going to be based around platforms and ecosystems, where you bring together the minds and the business interest, gathered around specific but complex issues to solve. GE are working on delivering this.

Through their platform of Predix, GE are providing “industrial-strength software and analytics” and spoke of having 40 apps ready for customer use today at this event. They are also throwing open the platform for others to use, build and develop their apps. GE will offer the backbone, architecture, resilience, and security for others to come onto this platform with growing confidence and work towards ‘apps’ that are even more tailor-specific to their needs beyond ‘just’ sensors.

The partners already working with delivering from this platform are Cisco, Intel and Accenture and GE’s investment in Pivotal will mean the amount of time GE executives will be spending in San Francisco building the resources behind this is a space worth following.

I gather they have 800 data scientists and GE is on a further massive recruit to ramp this up, well over doubling this in the region, to attract and blend the best in talent, software and analytics. I also gathered they have been but recruiting the ‘forty something’ person as well for their business experience, as they sit down and work through issue upon issue with their customers.

It is clearly evolving at some speed, GE are delivering the Medici Effect of breakthrough insights at the intersections of ideas, concepts and cultures. as our world becomes more intersectional when we merge one field into a new, unfamiliar territory for these radical changes in how we will manage in the future.

The combinations of smart machines, enabling technologies, big data modelling and analytics and determining the customer outcomes in increasing collaborations, will radically alter the Business Model of GE in future years, in ways that we yet can’t imagine.

As I left the R&D centre in Munich

As I look up at the crane as I left and saw the shell of the additional building going up in Munich, I can imagine that science, research and technology will fuse in ways that we are only beginning to grasp. I wonder what type of mix of skills that group of future employees will have, far more a blend, perhaps a more broad set, rather than one that is deep only.

We will be seeing software services, a changing portfolio strategy and GE’s scientists, researchers and engineers all managing not just in their deep domains of knowledge but broadening out into far greater engagements alongside customers. It alters and unleashes.

Combining in future ways with the chosen universities, institutions and partners, increasing working through and on these platforms. where collaboration and co-creation will move way beyond today’s open innovation concepts, focusing on bringing ‘synergies’ that deliver those vital winning outcomes.

The future era of innovation suddenly looks even brighter.

So those Asset-intensive industries that are looking to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and search to unlock new sources of customer value, are moving into a ‘connected realisation’ that will bring the industrial internet into increasing focus. It will sit alongside the social side, where the internet of things (IoT) has been making most of the running to date, encroaching far more of our business and personal lives.

The promise of deep, lasting connections and relationships all seem to be offering innovation in a new era of prosperity, were connected enterprise and the connected world come together with very different business models, built on this ‘promise’ of platforms and ecosystems, delivering in very tangible ways through a collaborative common cause.

A place where “Everything connects,” a book written recently by Faisel Hoque, is suggesting where people, insights, capital, infrastructure and ecosystems combine. One where the age of creativity, innovation and sustainability come together as the needed skills required to be continually adaptive.

I’m all for that era. We are at perhaps an inflexion point on the way we are thinking, managing, and collaborating in a connected universe for new growth possibilities. I’d like to believe so and from what I can see, GE is well on their way to working this out in its own, highly focused way.

The post Connected Enterprise, Connected World with GE first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Lets focus on the bigger picture here.

Developing our knowledge and then putting it to good use gives us the potential for securing a competitive position- that goes without saying, perhaps.

Living in Europe offers us enormous history, diversity and a constant respect for the make-up of its different cultures.

Europe is a very proud continent forged from this history of competitiveness but it is grappling with its place in the global world where others seem to have a greater present-day advantage.

For many, Europe seems stalled; in jobs, growth and its future space, it seems not so sure on what and where it can effectively compete in a complex and challenging world. There are so many competing voices within, draining vital energy, while others outside Europe are getting on with the job of equipping themselves for the changes taking place to effectively compete in today’s world.

The forging of the European Union needs more ‘heat’ to meld into the force that many want, yet every time it seems to be getting to that required temperature for effecting a real change, someone or something comes along and throws ‘cold water’ on it.

“Herding cats”

Perhaps that idiomatic saying of “herding cats” summarizes many of the discussions and debates that often occur all over Europe, offering up their part of the solution to what seems to me, increasingly an intractable problem. There is this ongoing attempt to control or organize what seems intent on staying uncontrollable or chaotic.

It just seems incredibly difficult to get the required direction or united determination to channel ‘our’ energies, perhaps impossible is a growing feeling that is fuelling even more the nationalistic pride built from centuries of disputes and disagreements in alternating alliances of the day.

Europe in whatever eventual union or collection of entities needs to stop focusing inward as that seems simply not to help. It needs to look outward and recognize the challenges it needs to go after and organize around, that shift the ground it competes on, so it can offer the foundations to build from for many of these individual voices to unite to move all those concerns that need clarity, work and a sense of clear direction. We are focusing on the right aspects to unite behind, to identify with and combine our unique resources.

At present we are all pulling in our own directions, to secure our own piece of the declining economic pie and that is undermining any ability for improved performance.

“Fiddling while Rome burns”

You do get this sense we enjoy “crisis and opportunity”. The institutions and bodies that are set up to lay out the broad direction within the EU, start with good intention and then occupy themselves with a host of unimportant or less important matters and neglect priorities during a crisis. They get lost in the details, determined to defend and spend the budgets and lose sight of the need for clear commercial or social outcomes.

The source of this “fiddling while Rome burns” is the story that Nero played the fiddle (violin) while Rome burned, during the great fire in AD 64. The flaw in this was there was no such instrument as the fiddle (violin) invented in first-century Rome. Equally the events of a fire have been constructed in all the rivalries and conflicting accounts that came after. I get a sense of this today within the EU, we are failing to orchestrate even the violin player, everyone is playing their own tune!

Europe stands at a real crossroads today, where it travels determines its future

It can stay locked up in conflicts, often chaotic decision-making, in its many disputes and simmering rivalries or it can learn from those events across its history and find a different path.

I doubt that path is integration of countries, even freedom of movement or common currencies or a given language. These are ideals suffering from imposition yet we can integrate and combine in ways that allow us as individuals to prosper and grow but also to unite in projects and across challenges that deliver a more promising future.

Grand challenges we can unite behind.
These come from the challenges that should be of the uttermost importance to our future well-being:
1. The long drawn out integrating the digital infrastructure across Europe to bring down the present barriers and allow less of a divide across Europe.
2. The ability to connect across a European energy grid that delivers on security, and is moving purposefully towards clean and efficient alternatives that are economically viable alternatives.
3. The formation of a scientific research community
4. The harmonization of intellectual property to accelerate invention not just protect it
5. The overhaul to our educational system to deliver the required skills we need for the future not based on the past.
6. Putting in place the roadmap to renewables that give investment confidence
7. Adding even more momentum towards key-enabling technologies
8. Having a reusable framework that reduces the ‘throw-away’ culture and mind-set
9. Tackle health and wellbeing in clear, coordinated and integrated ways across all.
10. Redoubling the efforts on food security, sustainable agriculture and land and sea management through a greater agricultural revolution.

I could add a few more but these are all ‘big bites’. We should possible go back to the approach to EU flagship programmes where the big agenda gets the required focus from politicians, bureaucrats, business and our institutions, at every level and engaging in meaningful ways with our broader society, then we are achieving more in ‘common cause’ and integration than where we have been heading recently.

We should push the EU agenda towards delivering integrated models to offer new value and opportunities, the innovation part, as central to achieving the need for new growth and jobs.

These big challenges give us our future, they break down the barriers, they open up our minds to what is the real borders to protect, to push out towards in different ways If we can unlock the barriers and ring-fencing on many of these that are the blocks today, we are laying in the foundation for growth and jobs.

There is nothing new in this appeal but the speed of change occurring outside Europe requires us to shift internal disputes and channel this energy into resolving the big challenges.

Europe needs to shoot for a different moon.

Structural issues are longstanding, we are attempting to protect far too much, we are falling to move towards a ‘creative destruction’ where innovation-lead solutions provide the better alternative in growth and challenge We link to these common causes as they benefit the individual, as well as the communities we are in (national, local, scientific, educational etc).

The push for a common market of ideas and knowledge that are allowed to flow

I detect some positive movement in seizing some of these outstanding big challenges in the way the European Commission is being set up and structured. The new commission structure is pointing to big issues; it is veering away from past integration mantras, wanting to deliver on some of these challenges suggested above.

I just hope it does not extend the list too much or we go down the path of dilution, spreading and stretching our capabilities and resources too thin and ending up with the usual past compromises, all wrought out in eleventh hour late-night deals. Of course this is perhaps wishful thinking and certainly early days.

Can we move out of our fiscal consolidation mind-set? We must

As we continue to have fiscal consolidation, we get rising Euroscepticism. We nibble away not so much at the edges we are actually attacking our core and this is where we are facing the defence of knowledge assets and finding ways to promote by, perhaps, uniting behind our bigger EU challenges.

So where does innovation fit, I’d say front and centre. Every conversation in every boardroom, in every political meeting, at each EU summit and discussion, it is the outcomes we await to hear. These need to be far more centred around innovation in the outcome, not just in nice declarations with little behind them but in cohesive plans that move us towards this agenda of tackling the ‘Big Challenge Agenda’

Scaling and building innovation waves

We need to scale and create the positive waves through innovation. Reality is not in what is going on inside Europe, it is what is happening elsewhere. It is the organization of those knowledge assets to scale and develop the waves of innovation that Asia and America are clustering around in better ways than in Europe.

These can be seen in numerous ways as geographical regions all look for ways to become the dominant force for innovation. Asia, especially China is testing that existing dominance and Europe and others in the West need to embrace that challenge, not attempt to defend against it in legislative efforts but in this necessary knowledge asset re-equipping.

Keeping innovation high on the EU agenda but in new bigger ways
Innovation features higher in national policy than ever before in many parts of the world. Let us all hope Europe does not drop the innovation ball, but cutting its commitments to what has already been hard-fought over, delivered in the Horizon 2020 programme.

Equally let’s not dilute its effort and whittle away its value in thousands of small, perhaps meaningless gestures built on political threat and fragmented thinking.

Getting Europe moving again will need a much bolder vision and then stay focused on funding it if it links into these grand challenges in clear or valuable (experimental) ways that can be a catalyst for others to pick up and run with over the next mile, as innovation is not a sprint, it is a marathon to run, at this big challenge level.

Who is that knocking on my door?
* China has set itself some ambitious innovation targets, in its production of patents, in producing more PhD’s in science and engineering than US institutions or European ones and twice as many undergraduates in these fields than the US.
* China is going about outpacing the US in investments in research and development, it is growing R&D expenditure by 15 to 20% per year, not just to catch up but to drive innovation into its future.
* Asia and America invest more than Europe in R&D at the ratio of 3:3:2. The technology-intensive activity in the Asian region is fast approaching that of North America and Western Europe.
* China’s invention initiatives are producing rapid results as the government seeks increasing actively in cooperation’s with its Asian competitors. Asian countries are mutually fuelling one another’s innovative success
* The precise impact of Asia’s IP expansion is impossible to predict. But its transformative potential is obvious as the commissioners of the patent offices of Japan, South Korea, China and, to a lesser extent, Singapore and Taiwan meet increasingly to define and coordinate their intellectual property (IP) policies although a number of territorial disputes and political divides do often get in the way.

Each of these examples is building future knowledge assets to unlock innovation potential.

* America equally continues to work through a clearer innovation framework than I feel we in Europe seem not to have, or it seems incapable of delivering in our current fragmented view of innovation understanding. We want to spread innovation either too thinly or distort its value and meaning. We need a clear overarching innovation message.
* Take the reports from the “NII Innovate America Council on Competitiveness” or the White House view on “A Strategy for American Innovation” as debate documents or guidance indicators that offer an overarching view of how innovation needs to work and on what is needed to achieve and maintain a competitive position for America, written by both Business leaders and Government officials.

So what’s next?
The European Union has consistently failed to exploit its potential for innovation-based growth. Europe remains less inter-connected in critical areas due to political grandstanding and catering to vested domestic interests.

Does Europe lack the capacity for change as we constantly fail to convert much that seems promising, we are often not commercializing on all our hard work? Others pick up the baton and make the ‘risk’ investments off of the work and initial investments in Europe.

We constantly get caught up in the politics of the day, that seem to continue to divide and rule in old fashion ways, yet technology, science, and innovation are moving at a force and speed we are often guilty of not appreciating its impact or wealth-creating prospective. Innovation does not respect borders, it seamlessly moves across them but we need to forge the infrastructure to allow it to flow in more efficient and effective ways.

It is high time we did understand the real value of innovation, it ‘touches’ us all, we can all ‘feed off it’. We need to mobile around innovation and find the right ways to release our knowledge assets that are residing across Europe in a myriad of guises, waiting for the organizing forces and challenges to unite behind and solve.

We have the latent capability clearly.

**Note : A really useful source of knowledge is this overview of the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators 2014 highlights some major developments in international and U.S. science and engineering (S&E) that explores many useful indicators in the race of Science, Research and Technology. It’s worth a read.

The post The Real Race is to Invest in Knowledge Assets and Grand Innovation Challenges first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

You find yourself slipping into a conference hall unexpectedly. You are confronted by 1,000 participants listening to the conclusions of six very wise-looking people at a table, explaining the outcomes of the summit.

They are talking about a summit declaration by providing 5 calls for action for a Wake-up. Sounds more than interesting, even important.

Now you quickly settle down into your seat, trying to ignore a few turned heads frowning at this sudden interruption after spending their three days working through this Wakeup Call and are quite rightly listening intently. This seems critical, you settle down to listen also.

So, without the drum roll or often accompanied with the appropriate dramatic music the 5 calls are announced:

• Deliver on the widely accepted and appreciated new instruments and policies (2014-2020) in support of innovation.
• Build a culture of ‘fail fast’, ‘risk tolerance’, and ‘fast capital’ to cross the valley of death.
• Create a predictable policy environment and embed innovation as a principle in all measures and decisions.
• Engage in joint thinking and acting across sectors and along the value chain.
• Change what you do: a deep mindset change is needed at all levels: companies, administrations, and citizens.

So you have guessed where you are yet?

No, well you are at the winding up of a three day innovation summit held by Knowledge4Innovation (K4I) as the 5^th European Innovation meeting that took place in the European Parliament from 30^th September until 2^nd October 2013.

Apart from 1,000 participants attending, there was in also in attendance three EU Commissioners, 30 members of the European Parliament and 150 speakers contributing their thoughts. According to the press release the conference summit was the largest ever, comprising of 25 events, including the opening and closing ceremonies, a series of conference sessions, workshops, breakfast, lunch and dinner debates organized by summit partners, as well as an exhibition and two press breakfasts.

Am you as overwhelmed by these 5 calls for action to Wake Up Europe?

Yes, these five calls are the suggested action calls to wake up Europe to go and innovate. Now I’ll be honest here, I’m struggling with these. Without the benefit of attending any of the 25 events, listened to the varies debates, taken a pulse of the mood within the conference all I’ve got to go on is these five actions to Wake Up Europe. Actually I didn’t even slip into the hall, I did not attend, I just got sent the press release from the event and from all my investigations and reading I’m a little lost here.

I’m sorry, no really sorry but is this really the best set of outcomes we can do in Europe?

Europe is facing unprecedented challenges; Europe’s very existence is being threatened. Competitiveness is eroding, standards of living are falling, economic forecasts still part offer some dark scenarios of economic decline, ageing populations, social capital and labour force shortage, increased food, energy and water constraints and a changing role of the EU on the global stage. Let alone the rosy picture of complete integration is caught up in a leadership impasse. We are simply failing to rise up to the challenges we have confronting us here in the EU. So we have ‘arrived’ at 5 calls to wake up Europe on the innovation front! These five?

So yes Europe does need to wake up to become really effective on innovation especially execution.  Yes, it must give innovation a primary role for its paramount importance within the growth requirements across each region within the EU.

It must drive innovation down  and across all its members countries in better collaborative ways, as each is competing increasingly within a tough global battleground and needs the ‘power’ of combining on finding both radical and innovation breakthroughs. It needs to innovate to get out of numerous sets of crisis.

Dr Burton Lee one of the speakers at this summit, a lecturer, European Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Stanford School of Engineering asserted: “Europe’s core crisis is a crisis of innovation and not a debt crisis. It is a crisis of chronic poor performance in creating disruptive products, new companies, new university models and new jobs”

The intent of this 5^th European Innovation Summit had as its original aims:

“to identify what needs to be done to bridge the innovation gaps, to overcome the Innovation barriers, which renders an innovation friendly climate impossible, or indeed, less possible than in the leading Innovation strong economies and focus on the key drivers”

So let me ask you, do you think the 5 calls for action will waken up innovation  in Europe?

In my opinion, I think Europe is utterly sleep walking even delusional. So yes, it does need seriously waking up for innovation, I totally agree but with these 5 calls to action? No, Really? Seriously? Am I missing something here?

I think we are suffering from all the symptoms of sleep disorder in Europe

Here is Europe we are dealing with all three types of sleep disorder, we are in a very disturbed sleep deprivation, we are or it seems exhausted, incapable of changing our position. It has all got simply to big, too complicated and far too difficult.

We lack much and can’t even a more powerful call to innovation action than these five…. actions.

So this must be actually innovation insomnia – sleeplessness as nothing we seem to do is refreshing us, facing us all it seems is a ‘prolonged sleep onset latency disorder’. We are trapped, and as Jürgen Habermas nicely puts it “Dozing on a volcano”

He also suggests in Europe: “there are extraordinary situations in which cognitive sensitivity, imagination; courage and willingness to take responsibility (by) those in charge have an impact on the progression of things“.

I don’t see this rising to the significant challenges confronting Europe by our present leadership. Surely in any ‘universal’ call for action we do really require from innovation, then we need to find statements that will resonate with all within Europe.

That is: EVERYONE  go out and make a significant impact on growth through innovation within the EU and we all will support you in every possible way – cutting down the obstacles, removing the barriers, solving the red tape, pushing in every way all the enablers to help you innovate successfully.

I simply don’t sense this from this 5 calls, they are just going through the motions of existing (entrenched) positions. There is no wake up call here.

We are actually suffering different levels of innovation insomnia

The three levels of innovation EU insomnia I suggest are:

Transient insomnia– this lasts for about a week or so after a conference like this one that I’ve been trying to figure out. You suffer conference deprivation but you soon forget about it as you quickly pass onto another disorder that keeps you in your depression and stressed environment. You do not have time to piece it all together.

Acute insomnia – You feel restlessness for some time after one of these conferences as you really can’t get any new momentum going. Even not as a direct result of the meeting you attended for three days, listening to some incredible, well qualified speakers.

You are suffering this acute disorder where nothing really changed to allow you to render any change in your own environment. You still face the same factors of innovation disorder when dealing within innovation inside the EU, can you wait for ever, even in times of crisis?

Finally, Chronic insomnia  and the most serious. This really does last for a long time. This is our primary disorder, the very reason for our insomnia.  Perhaps that is the 2020 real target. We not just suffer continued (innovation) fatigue, we really have got totally caught up in the hallucinations and mental issues that those deeply affected see things happening in slow motion, where moving objects just seem to blend together but really are deeper symptoms of impaired vision that causes double vision – we double our efforts but don’t solve the primary disorder.

We are all caught up in this chronic insomnia when it comes to innovation within Europe. We even begin to use the innovation mantra of “fail fast, risk tolerance and fast capital” to cross from this valley of death.

I’d like to believe we will become fully engaged but it has to be far more radical for innovation to really deliver.

It really does not matter if we agree or not that we have to Wake Up Europe, or we are all caught up in different levels of insomnia? I really can’t believe the 5 calls of action that concluded this meeting over three days of 1,000 participants deals with the fundamental crisis we face here in Europe for growth and igniting innovation.

We simply are not really addressing our deep underlying EU symptoms within innovation with these 5 calls for action. Do you agree?

If you would like to read more on this 5^th European Innovation Summit held through the organization Knowledge4Innovation then here are some links

Initial Release: http://www.knowledge4innovation.eu/5th-european-innovation-summit-2013

5^th EIS Guide Booklet: http://www.knowledge4innovation.eu/sites/default/files/5th_EIS_Guide_Booklet_1.pdf

Programme: www.knowledge4innovation.eu/5th-eis-programme-and-speakers

List of all speakers: www.knowledge4innovation.eu/5th-eis-speaker-bios

Final press release: http://www.knowledge4innovation.eu/press-release-5th-european-innovation-summit-europe-needs-wake-5-calls-action?

The post Insomnia or a Wakeup Call – Which? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

“the ‘deliberations’ took place on what could be done to strengthen the social sciences capacity to play a prolific role in conceptualising and research of social innovation, and thus favour desirable development of the globalised knowledge society. This led to the idea of a Vienna Declaration that should identify critical areas of social and scientific development, and state a number of equally important corresponding research topics”

The rationale behind the declaration states the Vienna Declaration is the first and immediate Core Deliverable of the Conference, created and established during the conference by joint efforts of all participants.

This makes me even more nervous, those that went decided to make a ‘universal’ declaration but OK, I can’t fully comment as it is difficult to see the whole context for this meeting. it remains unclear if it has a pivotal role or not within SIE in Europe, on behalf of the EU, on behalf of society within the EU? I’m left really not sure.
The declaration rationale then went onto stating:
“The topics selected and prioritised do not represent the completion of the process of determining the most needed social innovations and the corresponding research issues. In fact the whole operation was built on being courageous enough to start the process of getting there, while at the same time remaining modest enough to know that this is just a beginning.

It is perceived and shall be read, commented, and considered as the starting point in further clarification, specification, and operationalisation of important research topics social sciences shall deal with in an attempt to support processes of identification, development and implementation of the most needed social innovation of the 21st century.

In addition, of course, social sciences also are requested to also study, analyse, and assess the societal impact of innovations in general, and of social innovations in particular”

Finally the report suggests three main ways to build on the results achieved by the Challenge Social Innovation. (their wording)

1. To collect questions, recommendations, comments of support and critical assessment alike, the first and unchanged result of the identification, wording and voting processes of the Vienna Declaration is published for discussion in an open forum at www.socialinnovation2011.eu. Any entry in this forum from 1st until 31st of Oct. 2011 will be recorded and analysed by the Steering Committee, (steering committee of the very people involved in the declaration?) feeding in to the revised and commented version of the Vienna Declaration in the first week of November.
2. The revised version, taking into account suggestions and remarks to the initial version, will be broadly published and brought to personal attention of EC Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Ms. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, on Nov. 11th, 2011……..  At this stage of development it is neither possible to predict a certain impact in research and innovation support programmes, nor is there any guarantee that policymakers will really take into account the proposed topics highlighted in the Vienna Declaration.
3. The sensational high interest in Challenge Social Innovation – with 371 participants registered and many more who could not register anymore because of extreme overbooking – together with high standards of presentations, discussions, and results delivered emphatically call for establishing further collaboration and community building.

The European School of Social Innovation, formally based in Vienna, is conceived as an international Competence Network, reaching out to European and global scholars and institutions involved in social innovation research, academic education and vocational training. The proponents will organise a formal inaugural meeting later this year to establish the Board and other Organs of the Association, and to kick-off first concrete activities to become executed during  2012

This is a clear opening response to social need or is it?
It does sound like the conference was an overwhelming success for the participants. They are agenda setting, they are goal defining, they are research shaping. They are raising social innovation as a high sense of urgency to organize around. The question is for whom? For themselves to become an effective influencer independent of EU structure or an arm of the body set up to lead this?

They have adopted a set of research themes going forward made in response to major societal challenges  the Europe 2020 strategy sets measurable targets such as Employment of 75% of the workforce, investment of 3% of the EU GDP in Research, Development and Innovation (RDI), adapting to the challenges of Climate Change (20% less greenhouse gas emissions, 20% increase in energy efficiency, 20% of energy from renewable resources), reducing school drop-out rates below 10% and enabling 40% of age cohorts to complete third level Education, and reduce the number of people in or at risk of Poverty and Social Exclusion by 20 million.

I, by the way, have trouble with these strategies for Europe.

So far all I’ve seen does not tell me where we are coming from in regarding these measurable targets. Also I’m not clear how these strategies really does tackle real social problems of chronic health, promoting growth and well-being not only for, but also with the citizens, a stated objective of the initial social agenda documented by the European Commission.

Where the citizens engaged in determining these? Does it offer effective ways or just more of the same ‘push’ of existing policies? These measurable results, have they been challenged, debated or discussed- I might have missed that.

This declaration leaves me concerned.

Let me explain why

The explanation, I felt actually was very dismissive, as captured in the declaration:
“To aim at such specified targets involves the determination of a multiplicity of objectives and the need to co-ordinate scientific as well as practical activities in the wide domains of employment, RDI, climate change, education, and social inclusion. What is required here is only to a limited degree further development of business innovations and new technologies”. (my bold emphasis)

The declaration went on…..

“The most urgent and important innovations in the 21st century will take place in the social field. This opens up the necessity as well as possibilities for social sciences to find new roles and relevance (my bold again)  by generating knowledge applicable to new dynamics and structures of contemporary and future societies”

In the present way this document is written it seems to have a narrow agenda where social science is seeking out its new role and relevance but what I found constantly missing was the social good that it will deliver?

For me social innovation needs scope, scale and impact in all we focus upon, otherwise it will not ‘shift the gauge‘ on social issues needing urgent action.

Is this socially reflective enough?

I’m just worried that the momentum behind this declaration is not as well thought through, balanced out, social inclusive, socially reflective enough.
If the wording is right “What is required here is only to a limited degree further development of business innovation and new technologies” then social innovation may never get off the ground. This cannot be right surely?
I still subscribe to the barriers that were identified in a document dated May 2010 entitled “Empowering people, driving change: social innovation in the European union”

It stated:

“Social innovation is a risk-taking operation that requires imagination, perseverance and confidence to develop a creative idea of a product or service, and then implement a participative process and establish strong partnerships for its implementation and subsequent scaling-up. Social innovators are confronted with barriers that are often linked to an incompatible audit or regulatory culture.

Reviews and evaluations of EU programmes managed by the Commission have highlighted a number of obstacles to the development and mainstreaming of social innovations, including the traditional risk-averse and cautious organisational cultures of administrations, closed systems which favour single-issue solutions developed within clusters of organisations lacking mutual awareness, communication, networking and trust, fragmented capacities (resources, infrastructures and intermediaries) and skills (training, design tools, monitoring, validation and evaluation) preventing the development of a rich ‘eco-system’ for enabling social innovations, and insufficient stable, seamless and sustainable funding throughout all stages of the innovation cycle”

I must be missing something here– maybe social innovation inclusion

I seem to be reading another message with the Vienna Declaration from the above EU document. I’m certainly having a hard time to equate to this declaration.

For me it needs an awful lot more contextual work and linking it back to all the social validation that has gone on before it needs to take place. Maybe I’m just reading this declaration wrong.

Maybe I’ve missed some critical steps on how we got here.

I do get nervous on declarations, a lack of contextual background and timelines that allow for little constructive response. The implementation of any declaration is within the details and this misses much for me as it presently stands,  not in their enthusiasm but in relation to what has been developed before this declaration, in policy outlines and direction of social concepts.

Declarations can be noble but the wider community needs fully engaged for any implementation otherwise it becomes, in this case just a further body of academic suggestions that might miss the real mark.

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