FITT Final Conference "ICT INNOVATIONS: Research > Business > Society" || 10 May 2011

On 10 May 2011, more than 90 researchers, practitioners and policy makers from Europe’s ICT sector gathered at the final conference ICT Innovations: Research > Business > Society of the transnational FITT project (Fostering Interregional Exchange in ICT Technology Transfer). The participants discussed current challenges, best practices and future scenarios of ICT technology transfer in order to jointly improve the European Innovation Eco-System. Material and presentations from the FITT conference are available here.

“This FITT event is a very good example how transnational cooperation supported by the INTERREG programme can actively support innovation in Europe to create more jobs for European citizens. Within the past three years the FITT consortium has developed a practical toolset, based on regional best practices, that improves the different steps of commercialising ICT research results. And today’s conference on ICT innovations is an excellent occasion to put the project outcomes into a broader perspective and discuss next steps for a more innovative Europe.” [Ruut Louwers, Programme Director INTERREG IVB North West Europe]

Within this context, the Programme Director emphasised that the next call for proposals of INTERREG IVB NWE will open in September 2011 and that they are especially looking forward to promising applications within Priority 1 “Capitalising on innovation” (INTERREG IVB NWE for more details).

Conference Highlights

Panel Session I “From Ideas to Products: The Business Model Challenge”, moderated by Dr. Jürgen Jähnert (MFG Baden-Württemberg), focused on the challenge of creating a sustainable and realistic business model from ICT innovations:

• Prof. Pieter Ballon’s (IBBT iLab.o) presentation “Business Modeling: Creating Value from ICT Innovations” discussed the characteristics and examples of revenue-sharing models and platform business models as key elements of how business models are instrumental in creating value from ICT innovations.
• In his presentation "Science-to-Business Marketing – A new Model in Knowledge Transfer", Prof. Thomas Baaken (Münster University of Applied Science) introduced the audience to a new market driven model in ICT Technology Transfer. Thomas Baaken presented instruments on how to get closer to markets and how to create strategic partnerships in UIR (University Industry Relation).
• Claude Gomez (Scilab Enterprises) and Dr. Mario Cameron (CameronPartners) showcased their own successful transfer stories and provided valuable insiders’ knowledge on how to turn science into business.
• Drivers and barriers of innovation as well as science commercialisation lessons from the US were addressed by Dr. Carolina Garcia Rizo (MIT) in her presentation “Commercializing Innovative Technologies: The US Perspective & Strategies for Europe”.
• Finally, Nick De Mey (Board of Innovation) and his presentation “Rocking ICT Business Models” took the audience along several inspiring business model experiments. In addition, Nick de Mey introduced a visual toolset designed to explore and pitch new business ideas.

In Panel Session II “How FITT is Europe for the Innovation Challenge?”, moderated by Dr. Joachim Hafkesbrink (TII), current challenges of European innovation policy within the scope of Europe 2020, Digital Agenda and Innovation Union were discussed:

• Prof. Bruno Van Pottelsberghe’s (Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management) presentation “Do European universities FITT the innovation challenge?” focused on the role of universities in innovation ecosystems and how knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship education processes within research environments could be improved.
• Yannis Pierrakis’ (NESTA) presentation “Financing ICT Innovations: Trends & Challenges of the Venture Capital Market in Europe. The Role of the Government” outlined the high impact of venture capital on innovation and reported challenges that the European VC market is currently facing.
• 11 recommendations on “Catalysing European Competitiveness in a Globalising World” were presented by Alain Bravo (Supélec), who was in charge of conducting the interim evaluation of the ICT programme in the 7th Framework Programme of Research and Technological Development (FP7).
• Finally, David Moir (St John’s Innovation Centre) and Dr. Anton Theuma (Paragon Europe) pitched the major achievements and lessons learnt from their European projects “Achieve More” and “ICT-VentureGate”. While presenting their solutions on how to tackle the innovation challenge, both of them in particular emphasised the need to improve the investment readiness of Europe’s SMEs.

The short wrap-up session by Olivier De Cock (Flemish Agency for Innovation) extracted five main topics from the contributions and discussions at the FITT conference as common requirements for an attractive and successful innovation eco-system in Europe: culture, collaboration, community building, competent people and co-design.