Together with a series of more detailed Commission staff working papers (http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/documents/index_en.htm) it serves as an input to the preparation of a new European innovation plan, as called for by the European Council last December (in the conclusions of this Council, under FR presidency, space was one of the five industrial sectors explicitly mentioned!).
The objective is to put in place new ambitious policies to foster innovation in Europe. The new policy will be presented in the context of the forthcoming post-2010 Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs, taking into account the global economic crisis.
It is worth noting:
- in the EC staff working paper “Challenges for EU support to innovation in services – Fostering new markets and jobs through innovation” (st12956-re01.en09.pdf)
o p. 5: the Presidency conclusions of the European Council of 12 December 2008 called for the launch of a European plan for innovation, encompassing all of the conditions for sustainable development and the main technologies of the future, including new services deriving from them, in particular space-based services which represent an important potential market.
o p. 78: “[…] the European Knowledge Intensive Services Innovation Platform (KIS-IP), was launched in February 2008. The KIS-IP addresses the specific needs of innovative service firms and it focuses on the innovative service solutions in technological and industrial fields by developing and testing new or better innovation support mechanisms for innovative SMEs […]. The KIS-IP currently consists of three sectoral partnerships in the areas of ICT, space-based services and renewable energy services”
o p. 85: “Recent results from the Europe INNOVA initiative show that innovative SMEs operating in riskier environments like knowledge intensive services or very early stage markets continue to have problems accessing finance. For example, space-based services have difficult access to capital for breakthrough development in Europe. This is due to the problems in the European risk capital markets, in particular to the problem of providing sufficient growth capital. These problems are addressed in detail in the Staff Working Document ‘Financing Innovation and SMEs’ ”.
- In the EC staff working paper ‘Lead Market Initiative for Europe – Mid-term progress report” (swd_lmi_midterm_progress.pdf)
o on p. 86, the EC provides a number of suggestions for other applications of the LMI: “There are several industries and market segments which may be suitable for a LMI-type approach, for instance, in satellite-derived applications. […] more emphasis could be placed on fostering innovative products and services that could potentially have the greatest impact on meeting societal challenges. This would establish the LMI approach as a tool to meet societal challenges at hand.”
The EC is now organizing a public consultation which seeks to follow up the findings of the referred Communication. It will explore new ways to address challenges for a better European innovation policy and collect information for the impact assessment report on the innovation plan. To this purpose, a list of questions has been prepared (see doc in attachment).
All interested stakeholders are invited to submit comments by Monday 16 November 2009 to entr-innovation-policy-development@ec.europa.eu.
(Source ASD-Eurospace)