The European Innovation Act is an opportunity to “acknowledge universities’ needs”
A briefing from the European University Association (EUA) has reiterated calls for the forthcoming European Innovation Act to take account of universities’ role in the innovation process.
The act – which was originally scheduled to be presented in the spring, but is now tentatively pencilled in for September – is intended to address issues such as procurement and regulation that are seen as obstacles to the commercialisation of innovative ideas.
The EUA has previously argued that innovation success should not be reduced to simple output metrics such as volume of patents or new startups, saying in its response to the European Commission’s call for evidence last autumn that a better approach would measure “progress along the journey,” including measures of talent development, collaboration agreements and job creation – all areas which would place universities firmly in scope.
It warned that an overly narrow focus on efforts to keep companies in Europe would not fully address the hurdles of scaling up, where European universities play a vital role.
The new briefing makes specific recommendations for the legislation in areas including intellectual property and entrepreneurship. It argues that the focus of the act should not be only on startups in deep tech sectors, but rather broaden out to include other sectors such as social innovation and student entrepreneurship.
On IP, the EUA makes the case that universities would benefit from “guidance and examples” to support negotiations with both investors and academic inventors – a blueprint for IP licensing was proposed in the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy.
The briefing warns that the act must “recognise the distinction between IP and the skills/expertise related to a project,” which requires attention to academic career assessment frameworks and recognition of the knowledge and sector-specific expertise which comes from mentoring and education.
With an eye to this, the EUA argues that the contribution of innovation professionals, technology transfer specialists, entrepreneurs-in residence and business developers “should be explicitly recognised as part of Europe’s innovation capacity.” It also calls for proof-of-concept and maturation funding to form an integral part of the framework created by the legislation, given that they represent an essential bridge between academic discovery and market deployment.