EIT opens for business amid doubts

An inaugural meeting of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s (EIT) 18-member strong governing board yesterday (15 September) marked the official launch of the institute’s activities, with Commission President José Manuel Barroso reminding attendees that the full participation of business partners was a condition of its success. 

“The ball is now in the Governing Board’s court, and it has some important choices to make,” said Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso on 15 September. It is now up to the board to attract private sector money as well as the most innovative businesses and the best research organisations, he added.

One of the main benchmarks of the EIT’s capacity to promote and generate innovation, according to Barroso, will be its success in taking ideas to the market in the form of innovative products, services and business models. “Given this context, full participation of business partners is a condition sine qua non for the institute’s success,” he said. 

However, businesses, which are expected to contribute billions of euros to the EIT, have made it clear that they will only embark on the venture once proposals for concrete projects are on the table and if they find them attractive (see EURACTIV 29/05/07).

On the agenda of the first meeting of the EIT’s independent decision-making body was the election of its chairman. The board unanimously appointed Martin Schuurmans to this task, a professor of Physics and a former executive vice president of Philips Research/Philips Medical Systems (PMS).

The board also discussed selecting the first two or three Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) by early 2010. 

KICs are the main operational blocs of the institute and are expected to integrate the EU’s fragmented research, education and innovation efforts. They are set to bring together the departments of universities, companies and research institutes to perform education and innovation activities in inter-disciplinary strategic areas. Among the planned focus areas for KICs are climate change, renewable energy and the next generation of information and communication technologies (ICT).

Barroso said that the EU’s flagship initiative for boosting innovation will remove obstacles to the free flow of information and ideas and help create the ‘fifth freedom’ – the free movement of knowledge – by encouraging “fragmented innovation actors to go beyond existing collaboration networks and create truly integrated partnerships”. 

The idea, launched by Barroso in February 2005, to establish a European equivalent of the successful Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faced much criticism from both the Commission’s own services and EU research and education stakeholders. Some thought it would overlap with the EU executive’s existing innovation efforts, while others feared it would be financed at the expense of already established and well-functioning programmes. 

The Commission’s original proposal to build a single campus and require universities and businesses to detach entire departments for the institute was therefore significantly watered down. In the end, the institute will be a mere virtual network of those willing to do projects and educational activities together. 

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