National agencies at the break of a new model for innovation support in the EU: the innovators views. Rational

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1 National agencies at the break of a new model for innovation support in the EU: the innovators views 25 January h00-18h30 Representation of the European Commission in Portugal - Largo Jean Monnet, 1-10º, Lisboa This event is organised in the scope of TAFTIE s SoftPower Task Force Competences and soft skills in innovation agencies at the break of a new model for innovation support in the EU 1. In an increasingly dynamic and complex environment for boosting innovation in the EU, innovation agencies must reflect on the model, roles and responsibilities they ought to assume for providing the most adequate support to their innovation communities. Inputs from a number of stakeholders are valuable for this reflection, starting with the innovators views. Rational As Europe still lags behind other regions of the world when it comes to breakthrough innovations and scaling-up innovative ideas, a debate has arisen in the Union on how to improve the environment and focus on market-creating innovation, while also simplifying and filling gaps in existing support for innovative start-ups and scale-ups in Europe. The European Commission is planning to set a new innovation promotion system under the next Framework Programme for R&I, namely by creating the European Innovation Council (EIC), and Member States are themselves, through their innovation agencies, trying to reach their highest potential innovators and experimenting new instruments and support services to help them thrive. With a view to a more dynamic and vast innovation promotion landscape, able to capture value and explore its potential, European innovators need a continuous and well-articulated innovation promotion and support system that can create a friendly environment based on a clear assignment of roles at European, national and regional levels. How do innovators see these efforts? According to their view, how should they be articulated for a complementary support to innovation across Europe? To what extent are innovation agencies providing local support services that are accurately reaching the highest potential of their communities? What kinds of support do innovators feel the need for, either at local, regional, national or European levels? By the end of this one-day discussion event, a preliminary report should be drafted, collecting the viewpoints of innovators on their needs for advisory and support services from innovation agencies to enable and accelerate their activities and to provide a fruitful context in which they take place. 1

2 Agenda Official language of the event: English 08h30-09h00 09h00-09h20 09h20-09h50 Registration Welcome address José Carlos Caldeira President, ANI - National Innovation Agency Sofia Colares Alves Head, Representation of the European Commission in Portugal (tbc) Key note speech 1: How Innovation Agencies Work lessons learned Kirsten Bound Executive Director, NESTA s Research, Analysis and Policy Team (tbc) Besides a large experience and expertise around the topic of R&I promotion, including experimental trials, NESTA launched, in May 2016, a publication on How innovation agencies work: International lessons to inspire and inform national strategies ; It also provided the European Commission with a position paper on EIC with concrete remarks on the roles to be assigned to national agencies for innovation. The objective of this intervention is thus, to provide the audience (mostly innovation agencies representatives) and all other panels members in the agenda with the results and lessons from NESTA s analysis and with concrete remarks to help frame discussions along the day. 09h50-10h10 10h10-11h40 Coffee break Discussion panel I: Support to innovators: from ideas to innovation The first panel will gather innovators with experience in pre-commercial development of an idea. It will also include representatives of support programmes from different regions to allow for confrontation between the demand and supply sides of innovation promotion services. Questions to ground the discussion could be, among others to develop with the moderator: - Is there a value-chain approach with flexible instruments for targeting different stages of innovation promotion when the whole set of current European and national instruments is pictured? - Bottom-up approach: To what extent are national agencies for innovation reaching and capturing new ideas, businesses, technologies and innovators? And what about the European programme developers? - Which incentives and support services could help innovators going through the so called valley of death from demonstration in a lab environment up to development and market entry? - How should national agencies better interact with other agents such as incubators and technology centres/infrastructures to the benefit of innovators? session based on specific questions (if time allows, 2 rounds of questions for a more dynamic session), which will be forwarded to the speakers in advance. Slides will be allowed in case they help answering the questions or making a point. Moderator: David Golding Head of European and Global Engagement, Innovate UK (tbc) Branka Zlatkov CEO, Genos Glycoscience, Croatia

3 Ricardo Torgal General Partner, Indico Capital Partners (tbc) Eugene Mizin Co-Founder & CEO, JobToday, Luxembourg (tbc) Antti Vasara President & CEO, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (tbc) Nili Shalev Director General, ISERD - The Israel-EU R&D Directorate, Israel Innovation Authority Marta Catarino Immediate past-president, ASTP-Proton The European Knowledge Transfer Association (tbc) Maryline Fiaschi Managing Director, Science Business (tbc) 11h40-12h00 12h00-13h30 13h30-14h00 Lunch break Key note speech 2: Veniam Inc. A knowledge transfer success story João Barros Founder and CEO, Veniam Inc., Portugal Key-note speech 2 will provide the audience (mostly innovation agencies representatives) with a success story of a scale-up company with global outreach that had an academic origin. Veniam Inc. is a global market company based in California and Porto, that was born from academic teams in Portugal and business innovators from the US. Veniam is invited to share its story with critical references to the support that it benefited from institutional partners and programmes. A critical view on strengths and gaps of the available support along that path is welcome. 14h00-15h30 Discussion panel II: Support to innovators: scaling-up innovations into market The second discussion panel will be dedicated to innovators with experience in a more advanced stage on the innovation cycle, namely the uptake and commercialization of innovations. It will also include representatives of support programmes and structures from different regions to allow for confrontation between the demand and supply sides of innovation promotion services. Questions to ground the discussion could be, among others to develop with the moderator: - Simplification and rationalization of the whole range of innovation promotion instruments which guidelines? - Access to funding: what would be a useful service to improve the innovation ecosystem and leverage private investment for fostering ideas uptake up to scale-up level? - To what extent are national agencies offering differentiated advisory and support services to different innovators, in accordance with their dimension, maturity and level of capacity to perform R&I and manage innovation? How could that range of differentiated services be improved? - Which information could innovation agencies provide regularly to innovators for helping to overcome a risk adverse culture? - What kind of support services do agencies from other regions of the world provide their innovators with for taking up the best ideas and scaling them up to markets? discussion based on specific questions (if time allows, 2 rounds of questions for a more dynamic session), which will be forwarded to the speakers in advance. Slides will be allowed in case they help answering the questions or making a point. Moderator: Christian Frey Head of Unit Business & Innovation, FFG - Austrian Research Promotion Agency

4 Nikolaus Dürk CEO, X-Net, Austria Jan Bambas Senior adviser Industrial Affairs, Business Europe (tbc) Oscar Chabrera Co-founder & EU Manager, ViLynx, Spain (tbc) Guy Villax CEO, Hovione, Portugal (tbc) Maurizio Gattiglio Chairman, European Factories of the Future Research Association (tbc) Zeynep Sarilar Spokesperson, EUREKA Intercluster Committee & ITEA Chairwoman Dolf Wittkämper Head, EIT Digital Accelerator (tbc) Javier Echarri CEO, EBN Innovation Network (tbc) 15h30-15h50 15h50-16h10 16h10-17h40 Coffee break Discussion panel III: Views for complementarity on innovation support at national and European levels The third and final panel of the event should take discussions to the ground of the upcoming programmatic structure for innovation promotion in the EU namely the EIC within FP9, and how it could play along with innovation support activities to be carried out by national agencies. The future of smart specialization strategies is an element to combine in this scenario, especially in view of regional needs, and specific tools needed to comply with them. This session aims at contributing for an understanding of the added value of continuity and complementarity between national agencies for innovation s and the Commission s activities for innovation support, in view of the design of the EIC s activities structure. Questions to ground the discussion could include: - Simplification and rationalization of instruments at national and European levels so as to avoid duplication and competition between institutions, instruments and services, while exploring complementarity; - Flexibility to integrate financial instruments in the scope of EIC and the role for national agencies; - Governance: When compared to the ERC, to what extent should the EIC be autonomous or permeable to national and regional priorities? How will these priorities be integrated? - Regional perspective: How will the EIC encompass regional specific needs and articulate with smart specialization strategies and platforms? - Policy experimentation: should there be room for pilot-instruments to test articulation of different innovation promotion levels and of differentiated support services? discussion based on specific questions (if time allows, 2 rounds of questions for a more dynamic session), which will be forwarded to the speakers in advance. Slides will be allowed in case they help answering the questions or making a point. Moderator: Gonçalo Lobo Xavier Portuguese National Delegate of Innovation on SMEs and Risk Finance for the Horizon 2020 programme, European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) Carlos Zorrinho Member of the European Parliament, ITRE Industry, Research and Energy Committee

5 Stéphane Ouaki Head of Unit, SMEs, financial instruments and state aid, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission Martin Kern Director, EIT European Institute of Innovation and Technology (tbc) Carlos Oliveira President, InvestBraga and Startup Braga; High-Level Group of Innovators, European Commission (tbc) Katja Reppel Deputy Head of Unit Competence Centre for Smart and Sustainable Growth, Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, European Commission (tbc) Laure Reinhart Director, International innovation partnerships, Bpifrance Albert Bravo-Biosca Director, Innovation Growth Lab (tbc) Matti Hiltunen Finnish High Level EUREKA Representative, Counsellor, Research and Innovation at TEKES Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation 17h40-18h00 18h00-18h30 Closing remarks Christian Frey Head of Unit Business & Innovation, FFG - Austrian Research Promotion Agency Gonçalo Lobo Xavier Portuguese National Delegate of Innovation on SMEs and Risk Finance for the Horizon 2020 programme, European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) The closing remarks should integrate the perceptions and main messages that both national agencies for innovation and innovators kept from the whole day discussions. Therefore, a representative of each group will present their closing remarks. Both reported perspectives will integrate the final report of the event. 20h00 Social dinner