Paper [124 KB] The current economic and social environment is
marked by major changes and significant challenges. These have
defined a high level of complexity and competitiveness for companies
and countries within the international context. When faced with
this environment, a society’s ability to innovate becomes
the main source of generating productivity, diversity, and value
for companies, in addition to progress and well-being for society
as a whole. This has occurred in many major periods of historical
transformation.
The key to creating innovation is to connect science and business.
Innovation can be defined as the practical application of technological
developments and knowledge to meet specific business and social
needs. It is the link in the chain that allows technology and
scientific knowledge to be converted into useful and productive
value. Awareness of innovation’s strategic value, and
of the connection between science and business, gave rise to
the objective of this report: to develop a proposal that
contributes to improving the entire Spanish innovation system.
An analysis of the following factors is taken as a starting
point: conditions that define an effective ecosystem for innovation,
the Spanish innovative system’s current situation, and
the lessons learnt from a series of practical cases of innovation
carried out by Spanish companies and institutions.
To this end, this report proposes creating a Foro de Encuentro
(meeting forum), which would involve all the agents of the Spanish
innovative system and be led by business. Mechanisms and plans
for collaboration would be drawn up in this forum. Through specific
and selective measures, these would enable the innovation model
in Spain to take a qualitative and crucial step forwards.
The main goal of the meeting forum would be to develop a Spanish
model of innovation. Specific innovation projects would be undertaken
and used to analyse, document, and transmit guidelines for the
different participants to follow.
The model would be drawn up simultaneously. In addition, the
forum’s activity in itself would significantly contribute
to creating an enterprising generation (researchers with a market
mentality and business people with an innovative mentality)
that fully embraces the new model.
The ecosystem
Innovation is, more than ever, generated by the interrelation
and convergence of many agents within an ecosystem. In a favourable
social, legal, and cultural framework, this ecosystem can interpret
the needs and challenges of business and society. It can then
develop and apply knowledge and technology to meet these needs.
The ecosystem’s main agents are: universities and research
centres, government departments, financial corporations, and
companies. These should interact as fluidly as possible with
each other to encourage innovation, an enterprising spirit,
and the generation of value for society as a whole.
Some key factors that would facilitate the general administration
of the ecosystem are: developing the required talent; encouraging
research centres to take a suitably enterprising approach and,
conversely, incorporating innovation as a key element in business
management; providing the system as a whole with the infrastructure
and resources it needs to develop; and creating common areas
for communicating and exchanging ideas.
The current innovation system in Spain
The Spanish innovation system is not working effectively enough
to ensure an adequate level of technological development and
value generation, both of which are needed in the current competitive
environment. Critical mass as well as human, technological,
and financial resources are required to maximise optimisation
of and productivity by the entire system. In addition, it is
essential for the various components to be able to interact
with each other.
According to CEOE (the Spanish Confederation of Employers’
Organisations) data, only 6% of the current R+D expenditures
of Spanish companies is allocated to contracting projects generated
in Spanish universities and PROs.
Thus, the amount of investment in R+D+I (innovation) by Spanish
companies is low, and there is only limited permeability between
the public research system and corporate and social sectors.
As a result of these two factors, among European countries,
Spain registers relatively few patents (5 times less than Italy,
10 times less than France, 30 times less than Germany). The
rate at which research effort is converted into real and useful
innovation is therefore one of the lowest in Europe.
Consequently, there is significant room for improvement in many
different areas. This report has identified a series of priority
action plans. If these were applied to the ecosystem’s
main agents (companies, institutions, research centres, and
government departments) the innovative capacity of each agent
and of the system as a whole would be strengthened.
Lessons learnt
Some initiatives and instances of collaboration between science
and companies in Spain were analysed by this report’s
committee, as a way of understanding how the entire ecosystem
works in practice. Overall, at least ten factors were found
to be of value and should therefore be strengthened. Among others,
the following good practices were identified: (1) in each project
the strategic value of innovation was recognised; (2) generating
useful value for the market and society was the main driving
force of the collaboration; (3) technology was transformed into
practical solutions that could be applied to improving processes;
(4) there were rigorous operating models to manage, adapt, and
evaluate projects.
Proposals for action
As a result of the analyses and reflections carried out for
this report, a project is proposed that specifies how the Spanish
innovation model should be redefined in the short-term.
Existing experiences can be used to devise an operating model
that enables: the best professionals to be recruited, resources
and existing experiences to be shared, flexible work plans to
be coordinated, collaboration mechanisms between the different
agents to be established, advice and recommendations regarding
incentive and funding schemes to be given.
- The proposed project consists of creating a meeting forum,
where all the agents comprising the ecosystem can meet. The
forum would be led by business and would:
- Define areas and sectors of priority action.
- Establish all of the relationships that should be encouraged between the ecosystem’s different agents and define the values that should be promoted.
- Promote the recruitment of the best researchers and managers.
- Coordinate all actions required to attain and share resources and experiences.
- Initiate a pilot project to test the innovation model
proposed herein.
- Companies within the innovation ecosystem will assume a
leading role and work closely with the other participants.
They will also be charged with coordinating mechanisms to
develop and strengthen the entire model.
- Legal, administrative, collaborative, communication, organisational, cultural, and financial barriers will be eliminated. This would enable the innovation ecosystem to function on its own.
Papers:
The
structures and instruments of science policy Human
resources in research Science
and the company: towards a dynamic ecosystem for innovation in
Spain Spain
in Europe Science
and societyCommittee:
Committee