1 The EU in Need of a New Narrative
Both in economic and political terms, the EU is on life support. Its former attractiveness as an economic powerhouse, a political âsoft power,â and a much appreciated social model seems to be waning in the face of Eurozone troubles, the problems of migration and asylum seekers, or the political and military challenges at its borders. Far away from traditional integrationist thinking, which claims the EU has always been on an irreversible trend toward an ever closer union, todayâs analysts hold that the Union is losing its internal coherence, its historical significance, and economic usefulness.
For many decades EU politicians have followed the guiding star of an ever closer union pursued by one method, supranationalism, without ever trying seriously other approaches, and ignoring the complex nationalities. However, recent crises have resulted in a sharp drop in the Unionâs attractiveness. For a variety of reasons, the EU has become most unpopular with her member states, peoples, and citizens. This is not merely due to the fallout from the financial and eurocrises, but rather the Union suffers from self-inflicted damage resulting from its contested, and sometimes self-serving, goals, governance methods, and culture of the past. Both have been made obsolete by new realities.
Political systems fray and decay Europe-wide. An increasing number of member states are afraid they may face âungovernability,â with dramatic consequences for the social and political glue holding the Union together (Gretschmann 2015).
Indeed, these appear to be the most testing and taxing times for the EU during its existence. Reasons for growing Euroscepticism abound. At its very heart seems to be the perception by the people in the streets that an elitist power cartel of pro-European agents, with disregard for the real problems citizens all over the Union are facing, has developed and has started a âpower grabâ from national governments beyond what is laid down in the treaties. They feel disempowered, alienated, and subject to forces they cannot control (Gretschmann 2014).
The EU in stormy seas is in urgent need of a new and attractive narrative, a positive, encompassing story to tell, and a fresh idea to follow. It requires a recipe for pioneering the future and bringing attractiveness and popularity back in. In order to be prepared for the challenges of the future, deep-running changes will have to be considered and paradigm shifts will be required: a move away from âbureaucratismâ toward citizensâ preferences, away from the âroutinismâ of the community method toward âinnovationism,â away from walking the beaten tracks toward new paths of revised principles and open and fluid structures of decision making. Talking about change while continuing in the old ways will not do!
The EUâs internal cohesion will have to be restored, the European Common Good, which seems to be fading away, needs to be recalled and, last but not least, Europe as a whole, which is still lagging behind more active and agile emergent economies, needs overhaul and modernization.
All this implies revolutionizing the model of EU policy making, both in design and implementation, and to restart with new concepts and blueprints of reform.
What seems to the authors and contributors to this volume a most attractive narrative for Europe will be built on knowledge, education, research, technologies and, in short, innovation.
In order to make use of such a narrative, we may need to revolutionize European innovation policies in order to move ahead toward a European Age of Innovation and a European innovation agenda.
2 Coming a Long Way from EU R&D to Innovation as a Promise
To be sure, Europe and, notably, the European Union has always been interested in research, science, and innovation as a means of modernizing European polities and economies.
Whereas the early years of the European communities did not see much in terms of research policy (Guzzetti 1995), except for some limited activities within the confines of the Euratom Treaty, a first push1 occurred with the acknowledgment in the late 1960s that Europe suffered from a huge technology gap, vis-Ă -vis the USA and Japan. The seminal work of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (1968) about âLe dĂ©fi americainâ paved the way for thinking hard about what to do in order not to lose ground in international economic competitiveness. The result was a decision to pool resources and to synchronize national efforts in order to
- generate a genuine European value-added on top of national research benefits;
- provide cross-border, community-wide transparency and âusabilityâ of research results;
- guarantee the critical mass necessary for large research projects, infrastructure, and funding;
- tie together transnational and interdisciplinary research;
- avoid duplication of the same research efforts in several member states;
- kick-start projects by providing funding from European sources;
- exploit EU-wide economies of scale; and
- activate, promote, and strengthen new research areas and activities of strategic importance for Europeâs competitiveness, vis-Ă -vis the USA and Japan.
However, the approach was piecemeal at best. Innovations were connoted with universities or select enterprises or individual geniuses and inventors. Market forces alone were believed to steer and guide technology development and innovations either by demand pull or supply push. Market failures were the only legitimate reason for public policy to interfere. How far government involvement was to go was contested. Picking the winners by subsidization was no accepted strategy. And ever since, âinnovationsâ have always been misunderstood in Brussels as just an extension of research and development (R&D) programs.
Along these lines, during the last 20 years the European Union has further developed an R&D policy, and it has tried to make it complementary to the research and innovation efforts of the member states. Some progress has been made, but it is still too slow and too limited to have a distinctive and lasting effect on Europeâs growth and competitiveness. R&D2 does not automatically lead to innovation in markets; intervening and flanking factors, such as legal provisions (EU and national ones), administrative support, entrepreneurial skills, risk propensity, and public opinion, etc., are not conducive to an innovation environment and need to be addressed and tackled simultaneously. Concomitantly, the removal of bottlenecks and obstacles to innovation has always been a tall order.
While innovation is widely considered as a key element to foster growth and prosperity, and would excellently qualify for nurturing a new narrative of the EU, the recent stalemate, if not outright decline, in Europeâs innovation record and in its investments in RDI (Innovation Scoreboard3) demonstrates that Europe is far from achieving its full potential and has to overcome many impediments and barriers, notably
- a disconnection between European governance and business interests and value chains;
- an exceedingly precautious approach to new ideas and inventions; and
- a neglect of public government innovation.
Commitments to politically stimulate and increase investment in research knowledge and innovation have been made ever since and, notably, over the past 10 years or so but have never been met in full. Evidently creating innovation, commercializing innovation, and leveraging innovation is easier said than done.
In parallel, theoretical and empirical research on innovation policy has gone from the recognition that innovation is decisive (exogenous growth models) and the study of innovation mechanisms (micro and sectoral) to the modeling of evolutionary and path-dependent processes and the interplay of technology and institutions. Policy makers have not taken into adequate account such research and its findings (Kok 2004; Aho 2006). A lot has been said and done about an encompassing approach involving, for example, ERC, EIT, JTI, Lead Markets, or CIP4 about stakeholders, shareholders, producers, facilitators, knowledge workers, skills providers, and so on, but without much success and praise, not least due to lack of policy coherence.
Admittedly, we have come a long way. It has become general knowledge that (member) states should develop their innovation policies in the light of their specific characteristics and inter alia with the following objectives: establishing support mechanisms for innovative SMEs, including high-tech start-ups, promoting joint research between undertakings and universities, improving access to risk capital, refocusing public procurement on innovative products and services, and developing partnerships for innovation and innovation centers at the regional and local levels. And the icing on the cake would be a nice and attractive framework tying the national and local efforts together with the EU level.
3 Toward Revisiting Innovation in Europe
The European Union needs a new grand vision that can motivate people. Such a grand new vision could be founded on an innovation paradigm. Developing an ecosystem of innovations should be the overarching objective of the EU and of the member states for the next decades in order to guarantee and promote the best possible living conditions for the largest number of citizens. It appears clear that a narrative built upon an innovation paradigm can offer a nonconflictual, highly consensual, and attractive new compact, containing the glue for tying Europe together and integrating national and Union interests.
Innovation in all its guises is needed to manage the critical economic and societal issues of Europe of the first half of the twenty-first century, such as resource efficiency, climate change, healthy living and aging, food, energy, and resources security. To make it possible governance methodology and culture are necessary. Without it, the maintenance and furtherance of the European welfare model will be in jeopardy.5 Innovation is an indispensable source of competitive strength and a precondition for Europeâs model of âsoft powerâ in world affairs (Tuomioja 2009).
However, in Europe, different cultural and sometimes ideological perceptions, and differing public governance or management fault lines, in particular between (and sometimes inside) the EU institutions and member states, hinder making efficient use of available intellectual capital and economic capabilities. Indeed, economic innovation requires much more than research that may lead, or not, to a new or improved product or use. It concerns also new methods of production or delivery of services, the development of a new market, or finding a new source of supply of raw materials or manufactured inputs, or new design, or a new organization of industry, or management, or of public administration. Therefore, a traditional R&D approach to innovation is insufficient and ineffective and must be broadened to cover nontechnological innovations, including in the regulatory frameworks, procurement procedures, or intellectual property rights and standardization, to name but a few.
The emergence of novel concepts and products is often a result of improvisation, repeated trial and error, and the emergence of new tacit and explicit knowledge until some form of consolidation takes place. Innovation thus is a paradoxical process, combining, creativity and rigorous scientific method. It requires the opposite attitude from bureaucracy, which is about stable process and control in large entities; if it comes too early in innovation processes, it leads to inertia. But also beyond âmanaged innovationâ independent thinkers, amateurs, and dreamers often provide the indispensable imaginative leaps, the fantasies and intuition that are often more useful than the much-praised âanalytical rigorâ when it comes to new ideas and innovations. Attempts to trigger nonconventional thinking and to open new ways both in universities, firms and politics, but also in civil society organizations, are still both a desideratum and a priority. A quadruple helix is far away still. Moreover, leadership and support in government systems is needed to create the optimal framework conditions to facilitate other actors, primarily but not exclusively companies and universities, to develop and manage the chain of actions that leads to innovation of products, services, and processes in the market.
Modern political leadership for innovation requires vision, strategy, consistency, and proper governance of cultural tools. It needs to pay attention to the whole chain of knowledge development in its broadest sense, to diffusion and absorption, and to its transformation in tangible applications, which bring economically and socially measurable benefits.
In the EU innovation re...