The global and European context
for national and regional STI
policies
Peter Tindemans
Stockholm 26 April 2007
1
Overview
• Main message: learn to deal with new and changing
balance between the various levels that now unavoidably
interact and contribute to STI policies
–
–
–
–
–
Global,
European,
National,
Regional
Institutional (i.e. relatig to individual institutions)
• Illustrations of the globalising stage for STI policies
• The European theatre and current and necessary
dynamics, as revealed by comparisons with the US
stage
• Things to do, to reflect upon when laying out national
policies
2
The global stage for STI
•
•
•
•
Asia outside Japan begins to show up in global R&D statistics
China (still a developing country!): GERD >100 B$, second after US (~ 340
B$), ~ 1.5% GDP, 10% of world GERD (India ~3% of world GERD)
Much less so far in patent statistics: few tenths of percent. Will change rapidly
University ranking (Shianghai Jiaotong)
Asia Japan Australia/N-Z China
Top 100 9
6
2
0
100-200 15
200-300 16
•
3
2
4
4
2
6
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore only 300-400; first IIT 400-500: Artifact
ranking? Less emphasis on research?
3
Asian university developments
• 7 Indian Institutes of Technology (system
developed from 50-ies till 90-ies) + Indian
Institute of Science (older)
– ~ 2500 undergraduates, 1500 graduates
– Highly selective: 2% admission rate (“doing PhD at
Cornell afterwards: peanuts”
• Japan’s university reforms
– Mergers among 100 national universities; more
concentration and cooperation across faculties
– More autonomy, stronger internal management
– Significant increase in competitive funding, focusing
on larger grants and young scientists to set up shop.
• Singapore: lured Bertil Andersson
4
Conclusions
• Do we need to be afraid? No,
economic law of comparative
advantages
• Can we transform OECD Global
Science Forum into a serious forum
to discuss the full global STI stage?
5
European theatre highlighted by
US comparisons
•
Three broad propositions
1. Europe’s and nations’ R&D and Innovation landscape is and
must be very inhomogeneous (peaks and valleys):
concentration versus dilution
2. Regional dimension gains in importance
•
•
In many countries some sort of decentralisation
In STI: innovative regions gain ascendance, and require more
policy attention. That may but need not necessarily be translated
into more policy and funding responsibility at regional levels
3. We need a new balance between European and national
funding
•
Many cases and illustrations from US and Europe
provide concrete examples of level at which to pitch
policy responsibility and funding. The direction in which
to go is clear, but in most cases no unique best
solutions exist (one reason is: regions like nations come
in many different kinds)
6
An underlying mindset: accept and
cherish diversity and inhomogeneity
• In terms of R&D concentration and
innovation performance, continents and
nations/states are very inhomogeneous
• Governments at all levels should have the
courage to recognise and accept this
• The situation is not static, but it takes
vision, time and money, as well as realism
to change it.
7
Some facts about the ‘continent’ US
• Overall funding of university research
– 60 % federal (NSF, NIH, DoE, NASA, DoD)
– 7 % states
– (for completeness: 7 % industry, 25 % private
foundations, own income)
• In addition, much federal (and federally funded) labs
(FFRDCs, NASA labs, NIH institutes, ..)
• Heavy concentration of public and private R&D on
East and West Coast: only exception Detroit, Chicago:
car manufacturers! A less well-known illustration: 1/3 of
all SBIR/SBTT awards to California and
Massachusetts
• Also within states often heavy concentration:
Massachusetts, California, North-Carolina
• 200 universities carry out almost 100% of all R&D
Continental role for
basic research,
large facilities,
‘continental’
mission-oriented
labs
Inhomogeneity
and concentration
8
European countries innovation performance: the Innovation Scoreboard
0.80
Innovation Leaders
SE
0.70
CH
FI
2006 Summary Innovation Index
0.60
DK
JP
DE
Followers
US
0.50
BE
UK
FR NL
IE
LU
IS
AT
0.40
NO
IT
ES
0.30
HR
0.20
0.10
0.00
-4.0
HU MT
SK
SI
EE
CZ
CY
LT
PT
Trailing
PL
EL
LV
RO
BG
Catching-up
TR
-3.0
-2.0
-1.0
Dotted lines show EU25 performance.
0.0
1.0
2.0
Average grow th rate of SII
3.0
4.0
5.0
6.0
9
Summary Innovation Index
• Input – Innovation Drivers
– e.g. S&E graduates
– Broadband penetration
• Input – Knowledge Creation
– e.g. public and business R&D expenditure
• Input – Innovation and Entrepreneurship
– e.g. % SMEs innovating in house
– Early stage venture capital
• Output – Applications
– e.g. employment in high-tech services
– Sales new-to-market products
• Output – Intellectual Property
– e.g. EPO and USTP patents
– Trademarks and community designs
10
Regional specialisation in Europe
11
Regional Innovation Index
• Human resources in S&T
• Participation in life-long learning
• Employment in medium-high and high-tech
manufacturing
• Employment in high-tech services
• Public R&D expenditures
• Business R&D expenditures
• EPO patent applications
All in all 208 regions in EU-25
12
Key data for some US and European universities
MIT
Stanford
ETHZ
Cambridge
Karolinska
Scope
Broad1
Broad2
Science and
engineering
Broad3
Medical
Budget, excl
construction
1.4 B$4
2.6 B$4
750 M€
780 M€
440 M€
Number of
students
10,200
14,900
12,700
17,800
8,000
45:55
2:3
2:1
3:15
900 M$
sponsored
R&D
430 M€
285 M€6
research
grants
370 M€
<5%7
~9%8
10-15%9
~9%
Proportion
undergraduate to
2:3
graduate
students
Budget for
research
660 M$
sponsored
R&D
Contract
~15%
research industry
13
Zooming in: California, Silicon
Valley
• State California is big (population 36 M, state
budget 170 B$), has powers in important areas
such tax instruments (both as a source of
income and economic instrument), regulations
(e.g. environmental) and (higher) education, yet
in STI in many respects more of a ‘region’
• Region Silicon Valley small (population 2.5 M,
3900 sq. km = 1/10 of Netherlands); not a single
administrative unit
• What instruments do they use in the area of
R&D and innovation?
14
California policy mix in R&D and innovation
• Funding public Higher Education plus indirectly infrastructure for
R&D at public universities
• Funding, and is requested to improving science and math teaching
in K-14
• Only selected investments in R&D, focused on special initiatives at
UC (or UC managed labs); all managed by UC
– California Institutes for Science and Innovation (4, at different campuses
of UC; collaborations with industry; California provides once-only say
100 M$ each, requiring matching of 200 M$; usually new buildings,
running costs partly from investment fund, rest from federal grants etc)
– UC Discovery Program (60M$/y; individual industry-sponsored (>50%)
projects in selected areas at UC
– Helios project at Berkeley Livermore for carbon-neutral energy
– Western Institute of Nanoelectronics (UC Campuses, Stanford plus 6
major manufacturers)
• Tax policy, e.g. suggestions for tax incentives for angel investment to
reverse decline in seed and early stage funding
• Regulatory policy (environment, accelerating broad band
deployment, …)
15
• For free: the climate
Lessons
• effective actions only when
responsibilities/competences and money
are available
• Focus on limited number of actions and
policy areas
• Focus on strengthening institutions
(effectively only UC) and working through
these institutions
16
Silicon Valley
•No policies
•‘community’-type of organisation;
Joint Venture: Silicon Valley
Network
•companies, banks, law and
accountants, schools, local
government, universities, hospitals,
museums,….
•Focus is SV in all its aspects:
education, crime reduction, health
care, business conditions, culture,
housing and recreation, etc
•Goal: keep SV the thriving place it
is by working on variety of initiatives
•Identify challenges, and take them
back to one’s own organisation, or
as basis for lobby at state level
•Create consensus on new themes:
energy and clean technologies
17
Analytical tool:
The Silicon
Valley Index
“Measuring the
strength of the
economy and the
health of the
community”
18
19
The new theme: energy and
clean technologies
Venture capital investment in
clean technologies is surging,
as shown by quarterly data
20
Lessons for/from strong innovation
regions such as Silicon Valley
•
Competences/capabilities, critical mass and density (‘specific
mass’), focus
–
–
Strong universities and R&D institutes, strong companies,‘themes’;
count density: number/’volume’/’mass’ per sq. km
This is important aspect of ‘realism’ to heed for ‘voluntarist’ an
ambitious governments
•
Culture of cooperation and entrepreneurship
•
Facilities
–
•
Venture capital; science, technology and industry campuses;
incubators; business development support
Sense of direction, organising power
–
Uniting politics, business, knowledge and many others, such as in
Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network
21
A cross-border region in Europe with critical mass:
NL-BE-DE
Eindhoven
Size ~
Silicon Valley
Leuven
Dedicated Biotech life science company
University
Research Campus
Science Park
Jan Cobbenhagen / BioPartner Center Maastricht
22
Three-countries Region, many major public and private
knowledge players
Eindhoven Helmond
Philips Research Lab
Beerse
Philips CFT
(Johnson & Johnson)
75 km
Océ
ASML
Janssen Pharma
Geel
VITO
Venlo
TUEindhoven
TNO Industry
TNO Automotive
EU JRC
Geleen
Leuven
IMEC
KU Leuven
Jülich
Hasselt/Diepenbeek
DSM
Maastricht
U
Hasselt
Liège
U Maastricht
FZ Jülich
Aachen
University Hospital RWTH
Philips Research
U de Liège
University Hospital
University Hospital
Fraunhofer Institutes
23
Ford European Research Centre
Developing what is required
Competences, critical mass and density (‘specific mass’), focus
•
•
•
•
•
Micro- and nano-electronics; ‘hardware’ side of ICT
Automotive
Health Care and Life Sciences
Chemistry
Energy
Culture of cooperation and entrepreneurship
•
•
•
Large cooperative projects companies/universities (e.g. molecular medicine and imaging, biomaterials)
Many entrepreneurial courses at universities
Several business networks
Facilities
•
•
•
•
Several Venture capital companies
Science and business parks (open innovation, business development, incubators): High Tech Campus
Eindhoven, DSM Campus Sittard-Geleen, TechnologieZentrum Jülich
Active regional development agencies
Euregional Automotive competence centre: several technology support centres agreeing on
complementary investments in R&D and design services
Sense of direction, organising power: politics, business, knowledge
•
•
•
Sub-sub-regional: in Limburg Steering Committee, Agreed Agenda
Sub-regional: South East Netherlands Steering Committee, Agreed Agenda, backed up by national policy
Regional: evolving (Life sciences, Euregio, ..), but varying competences and political and administrative
cultures, political boundaries don’t fit logic of ‘knowledge economy’. Ineffective national and EU support.
Common cross-border vision still difficult
24
‘Opening up’ of industrial research process
Worldwide search and
Value creation:
evaluation of technology
products,
and knowledge
processes etc
‘Open innovation’
Research Campus, with
•Venturing
•‘Incubator’
•Technology transfer and support, …
Public-private
partnership
“Exploring wider range of
knowledge areas”
Developing
technological core
competences
within the
company X
“More focus and resources for
firm’s own competences”
R&D Lab of company X
Joint ventures
Creating more value faster
25
High Tech Campus - Eindhoven
•
•
•
•
•
Source: Philips Research
7,000 – 8,000 people by 2008
Synergy, efficiency and speed
Attractive conditions for R&D staff; state-of-the-art ICT
25 new buildings + 8 renovated buildings (Philips Research)
Conditionally open to other firms and institutes
1994
2008
26
Regionalisation can be successful:
the case of Flanders
• Belgium: probably most decentralised country in Europe.
Flanders can conclude formal international treaties with
e.g. Netherlands
• R&D and innovation, and HE, almost fully responsibility
of regions, such as Flanders (exception space; EU policy
making shared)
• Flanders (population 6 M) GERD ~ 3% of GDP
• 1982 “Third Industrial Revolution” vision, resulted in 2
spectacular successes: IMEC (micro-electronics) and
VIB (Flemish Institute of Biotechnology). Vision, money,
realism.
• Leuven University has one of Europe’s best technology
transfer enterprises: “Leuven Research and
Development” (financially fully independent of university)
27
Should innovation always be dealt with nationally
or regionally? USA: the case of SBIR/SBTT
• Small Business Innovation Research/ Technology Transfer
Programmes.
• SBIR: ~ 2% of R&D of US agencies has to be spent on R&D
by SMEs (<500 employees); considerable size: 2 B$ (40% of
FP6; another illustration of lack of focus of FP)
• SBTT: much smaller amount (~10% of SBIR) for joint R&D by
a small company and a university or institute
• Effective, though success rate is low (17%) and complaints
about bias towards companies knowing the trick
• Federal innovation programme, operated by individual
agencies
• Agencies define priority areas; idea is that innovations result
that will serve the agency and thus the country
• Happens also on larger scale: ‘Freedom Car’, ‘clean coal-fired
power station’. DoE, DoD, NASA, etc
28
Can Europe do the same?
• So, effective ‘continental’ innovation stimulation (apart from
self-evident tax, regulation and procurement measures)
feasible. However, this is not about stimulating innovative
regions!
• Is a SBIR-like programme possible in Europe? NO, Europe
does not have the equivalents of US agencies, not even in
agriculture (‘lawyers versus extension service’).
• (Theoretically, it could be done as a sub-programme of FP,
and it would be much better than all current SME-stimulation
in the EU. But difficulty of priority setting, and the strictly
European idea of limiting support to cooperative projects will
doom it.)
• Similarly, large projects driven by societal needs (energy,
environment, …) difficult to organise: lack of agencies, ‘juste
29
retour’, strict interpretation of state aid regulations
Things to when redesigning
national policies
Context: new balance between European, national
and regional funding responsibilities
• Focal points for EU R&D action
– ‘ERCs’; FP=mission programmes, including R&D procurement,
and ‘SBIR’;
– Large facilities
• Supporting innovative regions
• A Cluster EIT helps strong innovative regions
• A stronger system of European universities and research
centres
• An improved environment: pensions/social security,
improving European patent system, mind set
30
Changes in EU R&D actions
– Basic, academic, frontier research increasingly to be
handled as ‘continental’ affair: so increase
considerably budget for ERC, create more ‘ERCs’;
decreasing role national research councils
– Focus FP on
• a small number of major European ‘missions’ (e.g. energy,
contagious and epidemic diseases, space;
• these would provide scope too for major mission-driven R&D
procurement actions)
• and maybe on a SBIR-like programme (but forget
requirement to cooperate).
Can Joint Technology Initiatives help, or another example of
too many actors and insufficiently focused goals?
31
Requirements for orderly decision
making on large facilities
•
Budgets: size, availability, sustainability
–
–
•
•
USA FY2003: 4.4 G$ for R&D facilities (1.0 for DoE) versus
Europe: ?? –a guess, looking at LHC, DIAMOND, SOLEIL,
Barcelona, ISIS-II, FRM-II, etc plus ESA, leads to 1.5 to 2 B€
Availability and sustainability reasonably secure for ‘CERNs,
ESAs’ and Nuclear fusion facilities (ITER)
Reviews, strategies: now mixture of ad-hoc and structured
reviews and assessments. Example UK, Germany, France.
Budgetary process (defines underlying decision rhytm) and
decision mechanism, preferably across scientific areas.
–
–
USA has DoE (less NSF) and now NIH, the NAS/NRC foresights
and evaluations, interagency consultations, several facility-driven
‘federal labs’
Role of EU
•
•
•
Countries object(ed)
Present efforts: “G5”; EU Forum on Scientific Infrastructures; FP6
Organization of community, national and European
32
From presentation 08-04-02 for Institute of Physics
Has something changed since 2002?
• ESFRI Road Map, October 2006
• No progress on mechanism for decision making
• Last large facility (ESRF) decided in 1988
– LHC is different and ‘simple’: budget (CERN budget) and decision
making mechanism (CERN Council) exist
– ITER different too: budget (EURATOM) and decision making
mechanism (Commission has mandate, and consultation mechanism
with MSs)
– Human genome: Europe saved by private foundation, Wellcome Trust
• Two major new ones around the corner?
– X-FEL (governmental discussions ongoing since 2003!)
– ESS: two formal bids (Sweden –Lund; Spain/Basque Country –
Bilbao); a third coming (Hungary).
• Consider creating Fund (0.5 B€/y) from annual EU budget
surpluses; or national research infrastructures budgets, and
ESFRI-based, ‘variable geometry’ decision mechanism (like
33
in ESA)
Innovative regions
• Effective interplay between national, regional and EU
policies needed
• ‘soft capital’ (culture, living and recreation environment,
‘community’ organisation, technology transfer
mechanisms,…): region, universities/institutes in region
• How to strengthen ‘hard capital’ (strong institutions, VC,
…)?
– Regions: only focal areas and investments (cf California’s
HELIOS and Institutes for Science and Innovation)
– National governments and agencies, except in some federal
(DE, BE) and strongly decentralised (ES) countries
– Role EU, normally not. See however “Cluster EIT”
34
An alternative EIT: a Cluster EIT
Think of Cold Spring Harbor, Scripps, Silk…
• Create ~20 European Institutes of Technology: 300 scientific and
engineering staff plus postdocs, PhDs; annual budget 70 M€
• Theme from problems identified by industry as most significant next
10-20 years
• Let strong regional/national consortia built around one or very small
number of universities/institutes compete. Structural Funds and
regional strongholds throughout Europe (specialisation) provide
reasonably level playing field
• High-level faculty and infrastructure, many visitors (including
industry), academic backing, ‘city’-environment, shared techtransfer
facilities with host university
• 1/3 core funding, 1/3 structural funding from consortium, 1/3
competitive
• Core funding ( 500 M€) from European Innovation Fund (fed by
annual surpluses on EU budget), or one or small number of
countries with high ambitions
Source: Peter Tindemans, Luc Soete, Hans Wigzell, Alex Zehnder, Driek Vergouwen (2007) for European
Parliament http://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/docs/200704_EIT.pdf
35
Challenges for national, not EU
policies for university ‘system’
• more concentration (≠ more students per university
• larger differentiation in mission (where are
colleges/undergraduate universities, polytechnics apart?)
and quality
• increased autonomy
• increased selectivity of admissions
• more flexibile internal organization and funding
arrangements to stimulate interdisciplinarity
• changing the mind-set of students and staff: focus on
outside world
– ETH Zürich: 8% if students at entrance consider being
entrepreneur; 2% at departure
• more flexible employment regimes (e.g. between
academia and companies)
36
ERA???
• ERA discussion should, contrary to Green
Paper, focus on these issues(‘the real
things’)
• Changing mechanisms and priorities FP7
is only small part of the problem; the real
problems are on the tables of national
governments (including decisions to create
new European mechanisms, and establish
a new balance between EU and nations
37