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A NEW ERA OF EUROPEAN ENTREPRENEURSHIP On 5-7 May 2015, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology hosted an event in Budapest, Hungary, that brought together over 600 entrepreneurs, researchers, policy makers, business leaders and students from across Europe. Here, International Innovation presents their conversations about European innovation and global competitiveness, while showcasing examples of entrepreneurial achievements arising from EIT’s Knowledge and Innovation Communities
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IF WE TRUST the future painted for us by statistical analyses of recent trends, the world in 2030 will be a much more crowded place, with 1 billion additional people living on the planet. Alongside this rise in population, statisticians foresee rising demands for food, energy, water and healthcare, as well as potentially dramatic changes in the Earth’s climate. In fact, in the next couple of decades, the world is facing what some have referred to as ‘a perfect storm’ of extraordinary challenges. At the helm of a ship steering straight into this tempest is Peter Olesen, Chairman of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)’s Governing Board. Funded by Horizon 2020, EIT’s stated mission is to provide solutions to these rapidly emerging societal issues while developing products that meet consumers’ demands and desires. “We are working to enhance Europe’s ability to innovate and advance its global competitiveness by focusing on and nurturing our entrepreneurial talent and most promising innovations,” he stated at INNOVEIT 2015. While Europe may have the innovative potential and capacity to meet its goals, evidenced by the fact that it produces 30 per cent of the world’s science and technology as measured by patents and publications, this could all be for naught if Europe cannot find ways to effectively utilise its breakthroughs. “It is a cliché that European inventions are produced and commercialised somewhere else,” Richard Pelly, Director of RFP
Advisory Services and past Chief Executive of the European Investment Fund, noted in his opening speech during the innovation forum. The main glass ceiling discussed throughout the event was one of division. Within Europe’s economic bloc, would-be entrepreneurs have many factors to contend with, from vast regulations standing between an invention and commercialisation, to communication challenges that arise due to the array of languages and cultures that exist within the landmass. “If we want to boost Europe’s innovation competitiveness, we need to overcome the fragmentation of the European innovation landscape,” Olesen stated with zeal at the event. In order to rise above these barriers and address the world’s pressing issues in a pointed and scalable way, EIT has set up five Knowledge and Innovation Communities – or KICs, as they are more affectionately known. Each KIC is dedicated to bringing together the ‘knowledge triangle’ of business, education and research within a specified field and to forming dynamic cross-border partnerships. Out of these partnerships, each KIC helps aspiring entrepreneurs develop innovative products and services, and start new companies. “EIT is the first European Union initiative to fully integrate business, education and research,” Olesen enthuses. “We are convinced that this is the key to effectively innovate.”
KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION COMMUNITIES There are currently five KICs that fall under EIT’s umbrella: CLIMATE-KIC – as Europe’s biggest publicprivate innovation partnership to focus on climate change, ClimateKIC is striving to ensure that Europe is a hot bed for climate innovation
EIT DIGITAL – it aims to turn Europe into a global leader in information and communication technology innovations to drive economic growth and improve quality of life in the emerging digital society
www.climate-kic.org
www.eitdigital.eu
@ClimateKIC
@EIT_Digital
KIC INNOENERGY – to create a positive impact on sustainable energy in Europe, KIC InnoEnergy aims to reduce the cost in every aspect of the energy value chain, increase energy security, inspire smarter and more efficient operational security, and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases
EIT HEALTH – with a threefold focus on promoting healthy living, improving healthcare and supporting active ageing, this KIC will initiate innovation processes and support entrepreneurial activities while becoming one of the largest healthcare initiatives worldwide
EIT RAWMATERIALS – this KIC will integrate multiple disciplines, diversity and complementarity along the three sides of the knowledge triangle and across the whole raw materials value chain in order to turn the challenge of raw materials dependence into a strategic strength for Europe
www.kic-innoenergy.com
www.eit-health.eu
www.eitrawmaterials.eu
@KICInnoEnergy
@EIT_Health
@EITRawMaterials
By 2018, EIT intends to open three more KICs, which will be dedicated to food, manufacturing and urban mobility.
www.internationalinnovation.com
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ENTERPRISING ENTREPRENEURSHIP The purpose of KICs is to enhance Europe’s ability to innovate by nurturing entrepreneurial talent and supporting new ideas. Zhenyu Lin, Founder and CEO of Sensory Media, describes his business idea and the role EIT played in helping him launch it
IMAGINE STARING AT a rainbow in the sky after a storm. Now imagine that as you look at the various colours in the rainbow, you automatically have different tastes pop into your mouth. Red might taste like a hamburger, while green might remind you of passion fruit. While this may sound confusing and strange at first, there are some people who can actually taste colours. These people have synesthesia – a rare neurological condition in which senses become mixed. Not only may colours take on tastes, but sounds make evoke flashes of colour, numbers may cause pain and emotions may intertwine with sounds. Founder and CEO of Sensory Media, Zhenyu Lin, is working on creating a digital form of synesthesia, one in which an intelligent lighting control system synchronises wifi connected LED lights to music with emotionally corresponding lighting colours and effects. The idea for Sensory Media struck Lin in 2011. It was this idea that led him to EIT Digital, one of the EIT’s flagship KICs. “I realised I needed some serious education to know how to run a start-up properly,” Lin shares. “From there I was attracted by the EIT programme because it emphasises technology and entrepreneurship.”
Nearly five years on, Lin is one of EIT Digital’s success stories. He has secured many start-up funds through his activities with EIT Digital, and he is currently marketing various Sensory Media products to hotels, restaurants and bars in London. “Sensory Media is building an intelligent lighting control system that understands music like a musician would, and it expresses the emotions through light,” he enthuses. “This technology is applicable to all kinds of commercial spaces that need to create better music and lighting experiences without having to hire a light engineer and enables consumers to create the perfect atmosphere easily at home.” Lin has big plans for Sensory Media. After successfully launching its main product, SoundGlow, into the London entertainment industry, he wants to drive the products into mainland Europe and then East Asia. He also wants to bring new retail products to market that people can buy. In achieving all of these goals, Lin will use the skills that he learned from EIT Digital. “A lot of technology students have mindsets that are too fixed on technology; they often ignore market requirements,” Lin notes. “EIT taught me I need to change my mindset to focus on the market as well as the technology.”
KICs are not about policy. For us it is very important to get products to the market quickly. We are building an infrastructure where the roots are in education – we have the best universities with us – and we marry education with entrepreneurship Bertrand van Ee, CEO of Climate-KIC
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EIT REWARDS EUROPE’S BEST INNOVATORS A shining moment of INNOVEIT 2015 was the announcement of the winners of the EIT Awards, a competition that shone a spotlight on the best and brightest ideas arising from EIT’s KICs. With 17 official nominees, the competition was fierce, but in the end three entrepreneurs reigned victorious
EIT is going to play a very significant role in reducing European fragmentation through its collaborative approach. It’s a public-private model that is capitalising on private sector engagement and is organised sectorially, like the economy, under umbrellas such as health, climate and ICT. With five KICs soon to rise to eight, it’s clearly scalable across the European Union Richard Pelly, Director of RFP Advisory Services
THE PURPOSE OF the three EIT Awards was to promote the most promising European innovations and to nurture people-driven innovation. “This year’s EIT Award winners are excellent examples of how to transform great ideas into new ways to innovate effective solutions for Europe,” EIT Interim Director Martin Kern enthused. The EIT Venture Award, which focused on entrepreneurial start-ups emerging from EIT KICs, went to Regnar Paaske, co-founder of Nordic Power Converters, for its smaller, more energy efficient power converters. “Billions of everyday products require electricity power converters, but the technology has not developed significantly for 30 years,” Paaske noted. “Our solution increases the reliability and affordability of these everyday products.” Govinda Upadhyay took home the EIT CHANGE Award, which showcased change leaders graduating from EIT education and training programmes, for his development of the LEDsafari Lamp, an affordable do-it-yourself solar LED lamp made up from components that are easy to source from anywhere in the world. “What’s really different about our solution is that we teach our customers how to build it themselves so that it is customised to their own needs,” he shared. “This is an excellent tool to learn about solar technology design while reducing the use of fuels like kerosene in developing countries.” The final award – the EIT Innovators Award, which recognised innovation teams that have developed a novel product, service or process in an exemplary manner that could have high potential impact on the society and economy – was bestowed upon Rajai Aghabi, CEO of EOLOS Floating LIDAR Solutions. Aghabi’s invention offers a solution to the current challenges of offshore wind measurements. It is an advanced online viewer and user interface that provides georeferenced positioning and hassle-free access to realtime data, statistics and forecasts. “This is more than just a product,” he stated. “The next phase is to disrupt the offshore market with an innovative value proposition.”
www.internationalinnovation.com
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FUELLING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE KIC InnoEnergy is dedicated to providing sustainable energy solutions to Europe’s energy needs. We caught up with its CEO, Diego Pavía, to gather his thoughts on the field and to learn more about the organisation’s activities How does Europe’s energy landscape compare to other societies? The cost of retail and industry in Europe is two and a half to three times higher than the US. So what’s the difference? One main difference is regulation. Europe has more than 700 goal interventions, so the end price for energy for consumers is much greater here than in many other places around the world. While this is bad news for consumers, it also means that we have a lot of room for improvement, which is one thing that KIC InnoEnergy is working on. What are the differences between sustainable and renewable energy? A main difference is that sustainable is not renewable. Renewable energies are those like solar and wind, which are generated from natural resources that have a minimal environmental impact, whereas sustainable energies include things like nuclear, and now coal and gas because they can be created synthetically. In Europe, 40 per cent of energy comes from coal. We cannot abolish the use of coal overnight, because we would have to forget about all of our modern day conveniences; for instance, fridges and elevators. Are people ready to do this? No. Therefore, KIC InnoEnergy addresses these types of energies; for example, we have innovative schemes teaching people to be the future practitioners of the coal industry.
costly, they are costly during the initial transition, causing countries to hesitate in their implementation. What emerging markets are you seeing on the horizon in the energy field? Europe is basically stagnating in terms of economic growth, while China is increasing 8-9 per cent every year, so there will be a huge demand market in China for everything from consumer goods to energy technology. The topic of emerging markets is funny because we tell countries, such as China and India, to not consume ‘dirty’ energy. Why? Who are we to tell them? What we should be doing, as Europeans, is developing the technology that will allow them to increase their energy demands and consumptions at a cleaner rate. KIC InnoEnergy invests in ideas that might not take evidence for 10-20 years. How are you keeping partners involved for the long haul? That’s the uniqueness of the KICs – when partners come on board, they sign for 15 years. Why? Because to address any energy challenge, you need to commit to implementing the new technology from the day you find the invention to the day you are able to dispatch the plant with this new technology.
Can we ever obtain 100 per cent of our energy from renewable sources?
Why is creating a space for collaboration and creativity important to the KICs?
The answer is definitely no – we can reach 40-50 per cent, but we will still need energy sources like nuclear energy. Many people think that nuclear energy is bad. Nuclear energy is not good or bad in itself, although there are risks associated with the waste. While we should progress to using more and more renewable energy, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to stop using energy obtained from hydrocarbon and nuclear sources.
Think about it: how do you feel when you go to another country? Don’t you feel much more creative after experiencing its new inputs? From the new monuments that you see to the new languages that you hear, you are no longer constrained by your familiar surroundings. This is what we are creating, a new space where people feel unconstrained. Through these spaces, we are also encouraging training and promoting awareness of other collaborators’ motivations (eg. the motivations of researchers are going to be different to those of businesses) so that they can be in the same boat and row in the same direction.
Do you think the 20-20-20 climate and energy targets that European policy makers set for 2020 to reduce greenhouse gases, improve energy efficiency and increase use of renewable resources are feasible? The 20-20-20 targets are definitely feasible; moreover, they are not only guidelines, but obligations per country. The 20-20-20 targets are overall European targets and are distributed to individual Member States; for example, the UK, Spain and Germany. However, the 40-27-27 targets might not be feasible, as these are European goals that have not been distributed by country. Member States are looking at these aims and saying that they are good objectives, but nobody is doing anything because each country does not have distributed objectives for 2030. Although all of these transformations have end results that will be less
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Can you provide an insight into some of the most successful things that have come out of these collaborations? One of my favourite examples concerns a cardiologist and a Master’s student. The Master’s student shared with the cardiologist how he was going to take energy from the waves by designing buoys. The cardiologist said that the best design would mimic a heart, as it can work for 100 years and can handle high pressure liquid. So they built buoys based on a heart, which are now delivering energy at 60 per cent of the cost of equivalent technologies – they are not only better, but cheaper!
Read our interview with Chairman of EIT’s Governing Board: bit.ly/EIT_PeterOlesen
WORKING TOWARDS A SHARED GOAL KIC InnoEnergy is dedicated to promoting innovation, entrepreneurship and education in the sustainable energy field by bringing together academics, businesses and research institutes. It aims to create future game changers with a different mindset, and bringing innovative products, services and successful companies to life. KIC InnoEnergy focuses its efforts in eight thematic fields: • Clean coal and gas technologies • Energy storage
Another example is an innovative project done in collaboration with a university and Vestas Wind Systems A/S, a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer and servicer of wind turbines. The project aimed to measure wind power to decide where to build an offshore windfarm off the coast of the UK. Doing this with older technologies would require a 150 m mast to be built, which would cost €10 million in itself. However, using the fruits of this project, this can now be achieved using a much simpler method involving signalling. We can send out an initial signal and measure the difference between that signal and those that bounce to learn important information about wind patterns. This method costs €2 million and was called the best method in the world by a British energy investor. It seems like most projects KIC InnoEnergy undertakes occur at the later stages of a student’s educational career. Are you working to inspire young people into the field? So far the targets have focused on encouraging bachelors students, who are 20-21 years old, to enroll in our Master’s school. However, we have identified that once the students come to us, they have two problems. Firstly, they are dogmatic. They have fully formed opinions, which may or may not be based upon factual information. Regardless, as an innovator you cannot have an opinion; you have to be open-minded. Secondly, they come with suffocated leadership skills. Recently, we have been talking to children between the ages of eight and 13 to see if those skills were already stifled, and we found that they were still natural and present. We are now checking 13-15-year-olds to see where the system goes wrong and to find out if we can stimulate an appetite for thinking outside of the box. To address this issue, we have created a game for students between the ages of eight and 15, so that they see the whole chain and are inspired to work in this field. What are you most excited about for the future of KIC InnoEnergy? We are most excited about disappearing. We have a mission to change the innovation economic situation in Europe. Once research, business and education begin to work differently, once they are able to approach and address challenges that they were unable to financially address before, then we are not needed anymore. Of course we will find other challenges, but our current mission will be accomplished.
• Energy efficiency • Energy from chemical fuels • Renewable energies • Smart and efficient building and cities • Smart electric grid • Sustainable nuclear and renewable convergence The success of KIC InnoEnergy can be seen in the results it has delivered since its inception in 2010: CORPORATE • Attracted 27 shareholders from industry, research and top European universities and business schools • Attracted over 200 partners • Held a budget in 2014 of €300 million, an increase of €274 million since its founding EDUCATION • Received more than 8,000 applications • Enrolled 400 students BUSINESS CREATION SERVICES • Supported 80 ventures and created 47 start-ups • Screened 770 business ideas • €17.4 million in investment funds raised by new start-ups INNOVATION • Filed 59 patents and included more than 160 companies in its activities • Seen 24 products and services enter industry from KIC InnoEnergy initiated projects • KIC InnoEnergy is financially supported by EIT and, while a profit-orientated company, has a ‘not for dividend’ financial strategy, reinvesting all its profits back into the organisation’s activities
www.internationalinnovation.com
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