Game Changers for Inclusive Innovation
A think piece for the ESPAS 2016 conference by Carlos Moedas (@Moedas), European Commissioner for Research Science and Innovation
The digital revolution has democratised innovation.
On the one hand, users are much closer to producers and influence the way a product develops; they try out, evaluate and give feed-back. Also, the digital economy allows new — and smaller — players to enter the market and scale-up. In addition, the digital economy has created new markets, or new economic prospects. Think about bridging the gap between idle resources and potential users or customers. Uber or Airbnb are classic examples.
In the digital-physical world in which we live, we increasingly need open innovation, that is, involving more actors in the innovative process — scientists, entrepreneurs, users, governments and civil society.
I see three major challenges ahead for Europe in this regard:
- the lack of disruptive market-creating innovation;
- the scarcity of venture capital, and the difficulty of scaling-up start-ups to global competitiveness;
- and a risk culture that accepts that failure is an inherent component of entrepreneurship.
