Senior industrialists discuss RTD in Europe
The European Commission's Industrial Research and Development Advisory Committee (IRDAC) has published a booklet entitled "Let's talk research" which presents the views of eight senior industrialists on research and development in Europe. The booklet is based on a series of interviews in which senior industrialists were asked for their views on the state of science and technology in Europe and on the research programmes of the European Union. All the interviewees agree that, while Europe is strong in its science, it has failed to transfer new scientific advances into industrial practices as quickly as the United States or Japan. There is also little entrepreneurship on the same scale as, for example, the United States. The industrialists see the major challenge facing Europe as being the achievement of a sound balance between the free market concept and constructive cooperation in R&D between competing companies. In this context, they consider that a better focusing of the Community's RTD programmes is necessary and see the creation of the new industry-research task forces as a good step in this direction. The consensus was that the maintenance of support for top quality ambitious basic research in universities, which will diffuse into industry through highly-qualified graduates, must be a prime mission of the Framework Programmes. It was, however, felt that some parts of the Community programmes are still too oriented towards academia and lack sharp industrial focus, in particular as regards research on the environment, non-nuclear energy and the training and mobility of researchers. It was generally felt that an extra effort to exploit R&D results via the various European programmes and projects is needed, together with more rapid transfer of research results into development and the market place, through demonstration projects, "pull through" projects or capital venture schemes. In addition ,the Commission needs to introduce simpler procedures and respond more rapidly to research proposals. The eight interviewees were: Dr. Yves Farge (Pechiney), Professor Sergio Barabaschi (formerly Ansaldo, now Italian Secretary of State for Science), Dr. Pierre Castillon (Elf Aquitaine), Professor Hans Danielmeyer (Siemens), Dr. Ashok Ganguly (Unilever), Professor Helmut List (AVL List), Dr. Jens Rostrup-Nielsen (Haldor Topsoe), Mr. Dan Tierney (Cross Group), Dr. José Viana Baptista (Petrogal).