Yesterday, the independent expert report titled 'Align, Act, Accelerate: Research, Technology, and Innovation to Boost European Competitiveness' was officially released. This comprehensive report outlines 12 strategic recommendations (detailed below) aimed at optimizing the future impact of EU Research and Innovation programs. Drawing on evaluations from Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020, it calls for a transformative agenda to be implemented in the short term (2025-2027) and integrated into future EU support initiatives.
1 - Create momentum through a whole-of-government approach, aligning a transformative research and innovation policy with the EU strategic agenda and recent high-level policy recommendations
2 - Make Europe globally competitive, secure, sustainable and resilient through a stronger Framework Programme.
3 - Deliver European added value through a portfolio focused on four main interrelated and interdependent “spheres” of action
4 - Establish an experimental unit to test new programmes, evaluation procedures and instruments
5 - Strengthen competitive excellence in Research and Innovation
6 - Stimulate industrial RD&I investment in Europe by creating an Industrial Competitiveness and Technology Council
7 - Address societal challenges more effectively by creating a Societal Challenges Council
8 - Foster an attractive and inclusive RD&I ecosystem in the EU
9 - Drive radical simplification, user orientation and efficiency
10 - Unleash the power of demand by developing an innovation procurement programmes
11 - Adopt a nuanced, granular and purpose-driven approach to international cooperation
12 - Embrace dual use as inevitable by exploiting it both ways
The report critiques the slow pace of innovation, yet it overlooks crucial societal, cultural, and economic factors—such as market dynamics, education, and the collaboration between academia and industry—that drive significant paradigm shifts. Although it identifies systemic funding issues, its proposed solutions, which focus primarily on restructuring, fail to address the deeper cultural barriers hindering disruptive innovation. To truly support transformative research, the EU must implement more than just structural changes; it needs to fundamentally alter its perception of risk, tolerance for failure, and emphasis on speed.
However, it remains a mystery how European policymakers plan to establish their own equivalent of DARPA—or at least create an innovation agency inspired by DARPA’s model—when a significant portion of the European population tends to shy away from high-risk ventures. This presents a substantial challenge, especially in fostering a culture of innovation and technological breakthroughs that often rely on embracing uncertainty and bold experimentation. In this context, it's worth revisiting a thought-provoking article published in The Economist, where a Senior Project Manager at the Bertelsmann Foundation remarked, "Germans are averse to self-employment." https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-economistmigrants-are-likelier-than_23.html
In the introduction to the second edition of a book I edited in 2020 (excerpt below), I examined the divergent approaches to startup failure in Germany and the United States, noting the comparatively harsher treatment in Germany. More recently, on January 7, I made a recommendation urging universities to significantly enhance and broaden their efforts in cultivating the essential and multifaceted skill of resilience, particularly in the context of overcoming failure.
"Matthias (2018) compared media reporting about failure of start-ups in
Germany and the United States, noticing that US media reports more positively about
failed start-ups, than the German media does. This is also confirmed by Gellman
(2018), which may help to explain why in Germany entrepreneurship and disruptive
innovation are consistently low, whereas the United States performs very well in
these areas (Richter et al., 2018)" https://shop.elsevier.com/books/start-up-creation/pacheco-torgal/978-0-12-819946-6
PS - Lastly, Europe faces a critical dilemma in shaping its future economic strategy, particularly regarding the perceived drivers of business success in the United States. Robert Reich of UC Berkeley asserts that America's business success is grounded in what he describes as a cutthroat, psychopathic "culture" where ruthless competition and self-interest frequently overshadow ethical considerations. This raises an essential question: Is Europe prepared to adopt a similarly ruthless business ethos in its quest for economic success?
