The Challenges for European Innovation Policy

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Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me here today. It is a pleasure to see so many people here at this launch event of the INNO PRO initiative. And this is a great opportunity to focus on European innovation policy and cooperation.

Denmark has recently finished the most ambitious Danish strategy for research and innovation in modern times: The Globalisation Strategy.

The strategy includes 350 initiatives that will prepare Denmark for a global economy. To carry out the strategy, Denmark will be spending more than 5 billion Euros over the next 6 years. This means that in 2010 we will be spending more than 2 billion Euros – or one percent of GDP – on public research and development. This year we spend 1.5 billion Euros.

The Globalisation Strategy emphasises the commitment of the Danish government to innovation. We believe that national innovation policies and initiatives are important – and can be very efficient.

However, national policies cannot stand alone. Because innovation is borderless, innovation policy should be unfolded in a European setting. And I think that European cooperation on innovation policy can give our efforts more impact.

Good innovation policy is important if we are to maintain our position in the global market. But innovation policy is not a simple exercise.

Designing innovation policy can be complicated. Implementing innovation policy can be a challenge. And it can be difficult to evaluate. But the European countries have already come a long way. Innovation policy is given special attention in most member states.

As you probably know, the European Commission is currently working on a European innovation strategy. The European innovation strategy will focus on providing the best possible conditions for innovation. Also, the strategy includes a number of initiatives, which we believe hold great potential, such as the European Institute of Technology.

When the European strategy is supported by national innovation policies, we are more likely to succeed in our common goal of fostering innovation.

I am convinced that the PRO INNO Europe initiative will strengthen European innovation.

We should focus more on learning from each other's experiences.
We should generate good statistics. We should benchmark each other's initiatives and programmes. We should evaluate and analyse on our results.

And we should seek inspiration from the many good examples of best practice in Europe.

The Danish Globalisation Council is one example of such best practice.  We learned from the Finns and the Dutch, who have also used similar councils to debate the challenges and opportunities of globalisation. And just recently, Sweden has also established a Globalisation Council.

I believe that European best practice can help innovation policy-makers find policies and initiatives that work in practice and build on them. One such initiative is the new Danish voucher-initiative. It gives small and medium sized companies a discount when they purchase knowledge from research institutions. The voucher initiative has been running for a couple of years in Holland – with great success. Of course, Denmark will now be looking forward to the same success!

It is a very important topic that you will discuss here in Copenhagen. I am sure that you will enjoy these days of debating in this international forum. I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here with you today.