Maria da Graça Carvalho was invited to participate in a lunch on the occassion of the STOA workshop "European Innovation Ecosystem for generating value".
This STOA workshop was meant to act as a forum for a debate among policy-makers, top-ranking scientists, high level entrepreneurs and industry representatives presenting their vision of what could be expected from Public-Private Partnerships (PPs) in core areas of European development and the interplay between PPPs and the other policy instruments for Research and Innovation. The workshop took place in the European Parliament after the lunch debate.
During her intervention in the lunch debate before the workshop, Maria da Graça Carvalho spoke about Horizon 2020 covering the whole innovation cycle and aiming at an enhanced Industry participation in the R&D framework, a participation that has been dropped significantly over the last years.
Europe excels in the generation of scientific knowledge, but lacks the ability to transfer this knowledge into new products manufactured in Europe. Fragmentation, implying the lack of collaboration, not only between the Member States, but also between public research and the private sector, is another weakness underlined in the European Commission's 2012 Policy Communication on the European Research Area.
Moreover, European industry is also facing competitiveness problems that require the innovation chain to incorporate more and more added value in products and processes in order to address market needs. To boost this, the European Commission is promoting Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in particular key areas of development. The key elements for an eco-system for generating value need to be discussed and implemented, all the way from the generation of scientific knowledge, as enabler for responding to concrete societal challenges, to market and industry needs, where the reinforcement of the science/ industry/ policy-making dialogue is crucial.