Recently, Europe’s leading open innovation organisation, EIT Digital has announced its Strategic Innovation Agenda for the period 2020-2022, outlining plans to strengthen Europe’s position in the digital world and to help business and entrepreneurs to be at the forefront of digital innovation.
Notably, the document was officially handed over to European Commission Vice-President Andrus Ansip and MEP Eva Kaili.
“We have identified 5 core challenges that need to be addressed in order to build a strong digital Europe,” said EIT Digital CEO Willem Jonker.
5 Core challenges!
- We need to bring European values to the digital world by building global European digital businesses and scaling up disruptive digital ventures that have the potential for global success.
- We have to further address fragmentation to support digital enterprises and entrepreneurs. The completion of the Digital Single Market must be accelerated and the whole of Europe turned into a “de facto” domestic market for European entrepreneurs.
- It is necessary to raise R&D investments in digital technologies and emphasis on software, where currently American and Asian companies are leading the way.
- We must strongly increase deep tech innovation investments and take mature research results from laboratory to market, especially by means of entrepreneurship.
- And we have to adopt the European education system to the digital reality, to equip people with the right digital skills, and to deploy digital technology in order to support education.
The Strategic Innovation Agenda outlines EIT Digital’s strategy for the coming years and provides concrete answers to these core challenges.
“EIT Digital builds on strong achievements and will focus in the coming years on further increasing the global impact of European actors in the digital world” emphasises Willem Jonker. “We will do so by selecting and growing the most promising European digital technology from its ecosystem and beyond, and by supporting the attraction and education of necessary digital talent” continues Jonker.
Building on a strong partner ecosystem of business, research and academia, EIT Digital applies key instruments to strengthen European digital innovation:
Drive market uptake of top European research results: EIT Digital facilitates cross-border innovation collaboration to bring promising, mature research results out of the lab and quickly into the market. For the first time ever, EIT Digital opens in 2019 its call for proposals beyond its 200-strong partner network to generate even more commercially competitive innovations.
Support international growth: The EIT Digital Accelerator helps fast-growing European deep tech scaleups to expand internationally and become dominant global players.
Fueling the European market with digital entrepreneurs through education: The EIT Digital Academy equips talents with solid technical knowledge and the necessary entrepreneurship and business skills to spot opportunities, understand market needs and capitalise on them.
EIT Digital is a leading European digital innovation and entrepreneurial education organisation driving Europe’s digital transformation. EIT Digital delivers breakthrough digital innovations to the market and breeds entrepreneurial talent for economic growth and improved quality of life in Europe.
Since its launch, EIT Digital has equipped more than 1,500 students with the skills to innovate and become entrepreneurs; EIT Digital supported more than 300 startups and scaleups to grow internationally, created more than 120 new ventures, and launched more than 380 products and services commercially.
— Press release
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