Scotland Europa - Innovation
Innovation
The last decade has seen progressive regionalisation of innovation policies and a gradual expansion of the role of the European Union in this field. This was consolidated in 2000 by the signing of the 10 year Lisbon Strategy.
The Lisbon Strategy has led to innovation becoming increasingly important as a policy strategy but also in the delivery of EU programmes. Part of the rationale of the Lisbon Strategy is to tackle the competitiveness gap between the EU and the performance of the US and Japan.
The fact that there is a lack of competitiveness in the EU can partly be attributed to a lack of innovation, given the positive effect innovation has on growth.
EU discussions on innovation are likely to be a recurrent theme in the months to come owing to the ongoing debates on post-2010 Lisbon initiatives and reviews of the EU Budget and Cohesion Policy.
As well as its involvement in the overarching EU policy discussions affecting innovation, Scotland Europa will also work with its members on:
- Communication about a broad-based Innovation Strategy;
- The integrated “innovation agenda” with particular focus on the future of the EU innovation policy and how this could impact on local and regional strategies; and
- Communication on University-Business Dialogue.
The future of innovation
In February 2009 Scottish Enterprise hosted a PRO INNO Europe workshop on the future of EU innovation policy in Glasgow.
The workshop gathered academics, policy makers, innovation agents and consultants dealing with innovation support at regional, national and European level to explore how to better streamline and exploit synergies between different EU programmes.
The main conclusion from the workshop was that more transparency is needed on the funding possibilities of the different EU Programmes.
Further information
For more information contact: Luca Polizzi
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