KTU Santaka Valley, Kaunas' architectural landmark, is comprised of two organically connected parts: Science and Technology Centre and Technological Business Incubator, which is a part of Kaunas Science and Technology park. Almost 43,5 million euros were invested in KTU Santaka Valley, which was opened in November 2014.
Moedas compares national open access research, study and business centres to the beacons of innovation, and says that there should more of those across Europe. These Valleys are of crucial importance for developing innovation economy in the EU.
In the exclusive interview European Commissioner Moedas reveals why it is crucial to invest into research and innovation, and what are direct and indirect benefits of these investments to society, state and the European Union.
A year ago, when you visited the opening of KTU Santaka Valley (an object of strategic importance to Lithuania) you said that this Science and Technology Centre and Technological Business Incubator is a perfect example of efficient usage of European, State and business investments. What can you say about this situation now? Have you followed the progress of KTU Santaka Valley's activities?
The KTU Santaka Valley has proved to be an excellent Science and Technology Centre and Technological Business Incubator. You increased your revenues by 22 percent in 2015, as a result of your investments in R&D and other innovation assets. The Valley is clearly making the most of its research resources and potential and it is succeeding in attracting world-class research. In addition, it is expected that the investments made by the European Structural & Investment Funds will be paid off in 15 years, which is great news.
The visit to KTU's Santaka Valley was your first overseas visit as a European Commissioner. Did this make it a special visit? Do you remember it well?
Indeed! It was a great pleasure to be there, to share in the opening of the Santaka Valley KTU Science and Technology Centre and its new Business Incubator and I congratulate KTU's academic community, who have worked hard to make this Centre successful. We need to see beacons of innovation like this one flourish across Europe.
If we want to encourage sustainable development of the State, to increase well-being and quality of life in our society, business and science and innovation have to work together. In your opinion, are we progressing in this way? Is KTU Santaka Valley becoming the catalyst of collaboration between science and business?
Clearly yes, the KTU Santaka Valley rightly reunites science and business. More specifically, the Science and Research Centre is occupied by five science institutes, such as biomedical engineering, material science and synthetic chemistry, ultrasound and telematics for health. It also includes two science centres specialised in ICT and chemistry technologies. There are 14 innovative Lithuanian and foreign companies established in the Technology Centre and Technological Business Incubator already, creating an environment that promotes cooperation between the creators and consumers of creative products.
European Union has invested considerable funds into science and business valleys. What are the biggest threats for these investments not paying off?
It is true that the European Union is investing a lot of funds in research and innovation, but the European Commission does not invest in valleys as such since Horizon 2020 is a competitive funding programme. We are performing well when it comes to world class science. The figures from our previous Framework Programme for Research and Innovation –FP7– indicate that 204,000 publications have been generated, many of which rank among the top 1% and top 5% of highly-cited publications in their disciplines, which is well above the European and US averages.
We are good at supporting research, but we still have some way to go when it comes to supporting innovation like the exploitation of research and dissemination of knowledge. Horizon 2020 focuses, to a larger extent, on projects that are closer to market demonstration and prototypes. A number of public-private partnerships have also been initiated to increase collaboration in important areas.
Looking back at FP7, we see that its economic impacts have been positive in terms of job creation and growth. The High Level Expert Group carrying out the ex-post evaluation of the programme estimated that it will increase GDP by about EUR 20 billion per year leading to EUR 500 billion over the next 25 years through its indirect economic effects. Over 1.3 million direct jobs have been created per year –within projects funded over a period of 10 years– and indirectly 4 million jobs per year over a period of 25 years.
We are aiming to create the economy of innovation. What is the most important factor in implementing this goal: new technologies/equipment or human resources, i.e. highly competent, motivated and open-minded researchers?
The world today is open, digital and global. It is increasingly complex and fast moving – particularly in the field of innovation. I don't think we should prioritise one factor over another. What matters most is that all elements of our research and innovation landscape are collaborating for maximum impact. So yes, of course we need new technologies and excellent researchers – the more the better – but we also need more than that. We need to have our citizens fully embedded in the innovation cycle. We need inventive entrepreneurs. We need to embrace other forms of innovation – social, public sector, business model. Only when innovation is happening in all areas of our economy and everyone has their part to play in innovation can we say we have a European economy for innovation.
Can you recommend a recipe, a "golden" advice for inventing a language, which would make the universities attractive for businesses, so they would come here to buy services, to use knowledge and to help turn them into innovations?
Many European companies, small and medium enterprises in particular, lack the necessary absorptive capacities such as skills and know-how to tap into the European knowledge-base. That is why the question could perhaps be approached from the opposite point of view: how to make doing business more attractive to universities. We should incentivise our universities and researchers to become more entrepreneurial, reaching out for businesses.
The production of knowledge is valuable as such, but to increase well-being it is important that knowledge is transformed into business and public services. For instance, focusing on Open Science would allow for the re-use of open knowledge and open data by businesses for further exploitation. Open Science does not, however, automatically ensure that research results and scientific knowledge are commercialised or transformed into socio-economic value. In order for this to happen, open innovation can help to connect and exploit the results of open science and facilitate faster transfer of discoveries into societal use by businesses. Therefore, we need to foster best practices that support open innovation, such as different academia-business co-creation platforms.
In order to support academia-business collaboration further, we also need to ensure that we have the necessary framework conditions in place. As a way of example, we need to revise our Copyright legislation to remove any legal uncertainties concerning the use of Text and Data Mining technologies for research, so we can enable new innovations, stemming from the digital data available, to emerge.
Are you in contact with Lithuanian or with KTU's academic community?
Absolutely! My services are in regular contact with relevant Lithuanian authorities to follow, assess and monitor developments as well as the measures taken with to revitalise European research, science and innovation.
