Industry views on Research, Innovation & Education

The European Union faces major challenges to creating an attractive and competitive innovation climate. That it succeed is vital for the economy - and for its competitiveness in global markets. But the growing number of EU programmes intended to drive research-focused innovation appear to be at risk of disenchanting one of their most important constituents: industry. Far from increasing, industry participation in EU programmes is declining, according to research results. So what is to be done?

On May 12th, 2009, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, the Association of Swedish Engineering Industries, the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems and the Swedish Permanent Representation to the EU organised a day-long seminar to ask industry about the problem. The focus was on developing concrete suggestions for improving the performance of the EU´s researchfocused innovation activities. The conclusions of the session, entitled "Industry views on Research, Innovation & Education initiatives" included these points: The conclusions of the session, entitled "Industry views on Research, Innovation and Education initiatives" are presented in the brochure with the same title.