Cooperative Innovation through the European Alliance for innovation:
An opportunity for generating mutual opportunities, growth and wealth in a changing society

1. Introduction

“A greater capacity for research and development as well as innovation across all sectors of the economy, combined with increased resource efficiency will improve competitiveness and foster job creation”

EUROPE 2020, A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth

“The crisis is a wake-up call, the moment where we recognise that “business as usual” would consign us to a gradual decline, to the second rank of the new global order. This is Europe’s moment of truth. It is the time to be bold and ambitious.”

José Manuel BARROSO (Communication from the Commission, Europe 2020 … , COM(2010) 2020)

Europe is currently in an upward curve after seeing macroeconomic failures during the past two years. Rapid technological advances in ICT and the early selection and use of innovative technologies offer high potential for economic growth. The seeds of new business today may be the corporations of tomorrow since the recovery will determine the leaders of the future. However, a shift in policies and methods is needed to increase the speed of technological transfer to business to favour progress and economic expansion of businesses in Europe.

Indeed, there is widespread recognition that:

  • Education and Research are key to generate wealth by improving competitiveness of European companies;
  • Innovation initiatives and actions are essential to transfer research results to society;
  • Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are enablers of radical changes in vast and key business sectors and that will play a key role and impact on the future of European society, including health, energy, transport, media, and more.

Although these concepts are not new, Innovation in Europe is still lagging behind the world established and emerging economies, slowed down by excessive fragmentation leading to lack of focus, dispersion of resources and competencies.

While high level input from European Policy Makers are important, they will not be enough if not supported by a new mindset leading to a grassroots movement of professionals that will transform ideas into concrete actions contributing to business development and societal growth in Europe.

EAI has been formed to develop a coherent framework and a unified approach to innovation bringing together, under a single, federated operational framework, individuals and organizations to further enhance their core missions while jointly driving towards novel ICT-enabled solutions in specific, high-impact, sectors of society in which Europe has the highest potential to be competitive.

Integrating the core elements of innovation value chain (Education, Research, Investors, ICT professionals and Industries) via the creation of an open federated platform will improve competitiveness in Europe bridging the gaps in the innovation cycle.

Indeed, a key element of the vision promoted by EAI is to unite strategy decision makers with the bottom-up approach based on the concept of community. As such EAI envisions innovation as a complete cycle, from education to research to business to policy, starting with idea-generation validated by research and experimentation, policy alignment and communication, moving to prioritising and funding, leading to the development of a product or technology that finds its way into the marketplace benefiting society on many levels, from job creation to improved living standards.

Via enhanced tools and services, that will favour pro-active participation of all innovation stakeholders in all stages of innovation, the EAI will become the catalyst for a new economic expansion of Europe stimulating business generation and economic growth.

2. Vision and Mission of the EAI

The EAI promotes a distinctive approach to building a unified innovation landscape through:

Assembling a collective voice for European Innovation

The EAI aims at bringing together key European organisations involved in different steps of innovation, including education, research, industry, business, investors, and governmental and regulatory bodies.

Each member organisation is essential to the EAI, as it provides top expertise and significant contribution in one or more stages of the innovation cycle. By sharing their assets and communities, every member organisation can leverage the added value of the wider spectrum of competences and people in the enlarged EAI Community.

Improving the pace of innovation and market formation

The very nature of innovation has changed in the early days of the 21st century. It has become increasingly open, collaborative, multi-disciplinary and global. This shift means that the truly revolutionary innovations of our time — the ones that will create new markets, redefine old ones, and maybe even change the world for the better — require participation and investment across multiple constituencies.

The EAI fosters an open innovation framework engaging industry, research labs, open infrastructures, and technology start-ups in the same loop. EAI activities are formulated to appeal to all these components simultaneously, to strengthen their ties and to create new opportunities for transferring science-based technologies to the corporate level.

Helping member organisations expand the breadth, depth and reach of their mission

By promoting activities derived from their inherent mission, each organisation can leverage their participation in EAI to promote such activities in the Science for Innovation, Business and Technology (SIB) Councils.

Most importantly, through membership in EAI, member organisations can enhance the success potential of their own mission, increase their impact by gaining access to a larger public, and provide more effective activities by rationalising common resources.

The EAI will achieve its mission by pursuing the following main objectives:

  • EAI will cultivate a convergence of the European innovation community

The unified framework proposed by EAI, driven by a grassroots’ approach, will lead to a more efficient and consistent way of tackling the current slow-moving innovation cycle in Europe.  The EAI intends gathering under one umbrella all stakeholders in ICT enabled innovation and business to create a sustainable community able to streamline and enhance Europe’s innovation cycle.

To recapture the opportunities lost to the presently fragmented system of European Innovation, there must be a mass-facilitation and mobilisation of trust and cooperation among the individuals and organisations working on the front-line to advance the innovation cycle.

  • EAI will be the collective point of access for European innovation

With the primary goal of advancing European competitiveness, societal progress and market-place opportunities, the EAI shall be the collaborative ‘point-of-access’ and ‘ecosystem’ for all organisations and individuals who are engaged in the multiple disciplines operating within the European innovation cycle.

To reap the individual and collective reward of shared innovation opportunity, EAI and its member organisations believe there must be a collective and cooperative investment of people, expertise and leadership in constructing a solid foundation, which will pave the way toward building a bridge between research-to-technology transfer and market formation.

  • EAI will be the incubator for systemic european innovation process, practice and policy leadership

To achieve its mission, EAI will serve as ‘incubator’ for the cultivation and coordination of technological advancement, systemic efficiency and best practices in the collaborative innovation process.  The result will be a more cohesive and productive methodology for European innovation process and practice.

3. EAI Organisation

The European Alliance for Innovation (EAI) is a community of individual members and innovation leaders and participants from industry, research, government and non-governmental sectors formed to address Europe’s challenge of sustainable competitiveness and development through innovation.

The governance model of the European Alliance for Innovation, as described in this page, is the result of a vision and a set of recommendations developed in a series of meetings between February and November 2009 (visit Synopsis box on EAI home-page http://eai.eu/) by a group of interested parties.

As a unique federated platform to connect the strategic long-term view of institutional and corporate members with a community of individuals organised in a grassroots movement, the EAI is composed of two independent and collaborating constituencies:

  1. A Strategic Forum constituted by leading organisations, which will provide strategic innovation agenda, innovation policies identification and proposition, policy and regulation advocacy and will set priorities to benefit innovation.
  2. An EAI Community constituted by individuals, actively and directly participating in innovation building activities, organised according to thematic interest groups called Science, Innovation and Business Technology Councils (SIBs), which form the “working platforms” of EAI.

The organisational structure of the EAI will ensure:

  • Openness for participation and transparency of information flow;
  • Federation of different services and components facilitating innovation development;
  • Effective leadership of operational platforms for community activities;
  • Efficient management of the activities and the decision making process.

The different stakeholders will be represented in different groups and capacities as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Potential EAI cooperative multi-level platform structure

EAI Strategic Forum

The Strategic forum of the EAI is composed of the following bodies:

  • Assembly of EAI Members: representing all EAI member organizations (Institutional Organisations and Corporate Partners) (Institutional Organizations are Public as well as private non-commercial institutions; the Corporate Partners are commercial organization, including SMEs)
  • Affiliated Organisations Group: representing public authorities, national and regional bodies (non-EAI members). The Affiliated Organisations Group supports the EAI Senate with coordination of strategic matters and EU policies of joint interest. They may also participate in the Assembly as observers.
  • EAI Senate: composed of elected EAI Members representatives (election procedures and rules to be defined).
  • Expert Advisory Board: composed of leading visionaries and recognised experts to Support the EAI Senate in decision-making and policy advocacy, as necessary to further the goals and mission of the EAI.
  • In addition,
    • a Community Liaison Committee, appointed by the Senate, manages interaction and cooperation between the EAI Strategic Forum and EAI Community; and
    • Working Groups may be set up to cover different specific topics such as e.g. Membership, Innovation Cycle, Governance, Corporate/Social Responsibility, etc. Such working may have a permanent status, or may be set-up on specific issues and then closed. The Working Groups will be interfacing the Activity Councils of the EAI Community.

EAI Community

The EAI Community is organized in thematic interest groups called Science, Innovation and Business Technology Councils (SIBs), which form the “working platforms” of EAI. SIBs serve as the point-of-development and interaction for individuals participating in EAI activities and initiatives, and act as access points for EAI member organizations interested to contribute a service or support an activity in the Innovation Cycle. The participation in SIB activities occurs through portals and SIB summits, and can be augmented by additional activities as approved by individual SIBs.

EAI Community organs, as outlined in Figure 1, are:

  • SIB Chairs Assembly: the SIB Chairs Assembly is made up of Chairpersons from all SIBs and is responsible for coordinating SIBs activities, SIBs interaction, and communication. The SIB Chairs Assembly is also responsible for coordination with the EAI Strategic Forum, via interaction with the Community Liaison Committee, and for implementing the Strategic Innovation Agenda consistent with guidelines provided by the EAI Strategic Forum.
  • SIB Boards: the SIB Boards are responsible for defining and promoting innovation excellence within each SIB by coordinating internal SIB activities.
  • SIB Committees: are respectively responsible for a specific horizontal activity of the Innovation Cycle within each SIB.
  • Activity Councils are responsible for the coordination of the support of a horizontal activity offered within each SIB. Activity Council consists of the Chairs of the various SIB Committees for that specific activity and for coordination of the administration of the activity with the Activities Management Council.

The Community Administration, a non-profit entity, is comprised of the Innovation Community Council, Activities Management Council, Executive Assembly, Management Board, Secretariat, and Infrastructural Services Management. The Community Administration is responsible for the professional management of the community activities and for the adherence of the Community of individual members to procedures and organization consistent with professional society principles. The Community Administration, being legally incorporated will deal with all liability, trademark, copyright and other procedural elements of the Community Activities. As such the Administration will provide administrative support and guidance for SIB operation and management, applying professional society principals, and is responsible of executive, management and secretarial services and infrastructural support.