Regional development, a driver of innovation
The growth of European innovation is intrinsically linked to regional performance, believes European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Danuta Hübner. Speaking to participants at the 'Regions for Economic Change' conference on 7 March, Ms Hübner said that Europe was showing signs of becoming a world leader in innovation. Recent analyses show that Europe has 29% of the world's leading 2,000 companies, broadly in line with its 30% share of world GDP. The recently published European innovation scoreboard for 2006 shows that the innovation gap between Europe and the US has been consistently decreasing since 2002 and is now roughly half what it was then. Out of the top six world innovation leaders, four are situated in the EU (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany). Much of this achievement, said the Commissioner, is intrinsically linked to regional performance. She pointed to regions like Uusima, Stockholm and Hamburg, which are on the top of the Regional European Competitiveness Index ranking. 'Interestingly enough, we can see that these are not isolated cases as most of the regions in countries leading in innovation score very well in terms of regional competitiveness,' she noted. According to the Commissioner, this confirms the view that competitiveness requires the upgrading and economic development of all regions together. 'Even more importantly, it also shows that competitiveness is not a zero sum game which relies on shifting of a finite amount of resources from one region to another. All regions can be winners,' suggested Ms Hübner. Ms Hübner said she was pleased to see that Member States were making innovation and the Lisbon Goals a 'central tenet' to their cohesion policy. It is estimated that €200 billion of the €350 billion allocated to regional policy is targeted at areas singled out in the Lisbon Strategy as key drivers of growth, competitiveness and jobs. Of this, some€40 billion - more than 10% of the total - will be invested specifically in innovation and research and development (R&D). 'Importantly, the Commission's intention is that this contribution exploits the synergy with other EU policies targeting research and development,' said the Commissioner. In June, the Commission will publish a communication which will provide more guidelines on this issue, she added. Innovation and growth is also at the very heart of the Regions for Economic Change initiative, which will run from 2007 to 2013. The initiative will aim to boost innovation by bringing European regions together into strong partnerships and helping them to take advantage of experience and best practice. 'If relationships are important to innovation-based economic development it is clear that regional policy must further develop the approach based on networking and cooperation,' said Ms Hübner 'Modern economics teaches us that whenever resources are scarce there are competitive pressures to cooperate as there is an important correlation between trust and economic success,' she concluded.