 the next hour and benefit from the cross section of panelists we have here this morning to consider the overarching theme for this meeting of of sparking a climate of innovation, driving innovation, fueling innovation in Europe, to really unpack that into a number of different facets of the innovation ecosystem from the talent component to technology and what's being innovated to social entrepreneurship, to new modes of innovation looking at design and science, looking at the research climate in Europe and really engaging with you in conversations and taking the advantage of this broad opportunity with this panel to tackle really any possible dimension from the standpoint of people who are doing it, who are representing some of the leading game changers across Europe and those driving disruption in a number of different sectors to to really unpack this innovation story. So I want to I want to kind of set the stage a little bit and offer the opportunity to any of our panelists who want to take this first question and then we'll sort of start a conversation from there. What is it that makes Europe unique when it comes to innovation? When you think about innovation, is there something that immediately comes to mind either present day, historical, future oriented? What are the words or ideas you associate first and foremost when you think about Europe and innovation from your perspective? Anyone who wants to start? Early morning. Okay, well I will definitely go first as a one of the few European innovators in the software industry. We've always found that we had an advantage globally by the diversity that you grow up with as a European company. You understand how Europe is a combination of many, many countries with very different cultural backgrounds as well as size and maturity which gives you actually an opportunity if you know how to deal with it. And so we've seen when we compete against American companies in particular that that DNA of understanding how to leverage diversity alone in our headquarter we have more than 70 different countries from our employees represented and we've been used to that for 39 years and it gives a tremendous opportunity. It is also a challenge and you need to know how to deal with that so I would say diversity is the opportunity. The question is are we today in Europe set up to leverage that diversity or not? So diversity, what else? I would say that when you think of European products or things produced you always think of excellence so I think the ability to never settle for mediocrity plays into the innovation space very much here in Europe and what we see is the quality of the people, the quest with our clients, the quest for producing excellent things really plays into wanting the best and that drives that innovation. Do you see that across sectors? Do you think that's a universal truth? Is that universal? You know it's interesting I was thinking about that before I came here and I do I mean whether we're working with an automobile company or we're working with SAP or we're working with you know an energy company it's that it's that drive there and you don't necessarily see that in in other parts of the world. So maybe since I'm on my home turf here in Vienna and you know seeing this beautiful room here that the Vienna was 100 years ago of the center of arts, the center of sciences, this is where blood groups were introduced to the world where Siegmund Freud developed his ideas, the place of Kafka. So the real issue is how do we create again an infrastructure, a culture that this can happen again, doesn't need to be in Vienna, can be in London, in other places and having traveled the world and you know being associated with Chinese the Academy of Sciences there and having lived for a long time in America. I really feel this innovation space has shifted to America, is now shifting to India and China and I think the real future of Europe must be that we create this culture again this this culture which basically created this great place in Europe. So my feeling is there are a lot of issues we have to address. We have as good ideas as the others but there are issues of financing how to create good organizations. Do you get the sense as somebody based here, do you get the sense that there is a unified view of that richness of that legacy? Is that a pan-European view? Is it heterogeneous across the European Union? Is there is there such thing as a kind of common European view that you're expressing? It's coming. I'm a member of the European Research Council so I'm actually seeing all the best young scientists coming so we have no lack of really bright people but in many places it's this particular interest of countries, small spaces, small local politics which kind of hindered this diversity, this innovation space and of course we have seen that many of our brightest people have left to America. The Vice Premier of Serbia recently told me that 90% of his bright kids are leaving and so I think it's a real issue we have to address. Well happily can I pick up on being an American based in the UK. I do get a sense of both sides of that discussion and I think the scale of the American economy combined with a pioneer immigrant culture has really fostered an innovation culture and mindset and Europe being much you know each part of it being relatively small although in total there's a lot of people kind of undermines that to some degree and not being as much of an immigrant culture they don't have Europeans don't have that mindset but one clear advantage living in the UK and looking at in particular the English experience they and most European countries have historically traveled around the world for good and bad and but they have a real understanding of parts of the world whereas in America we have less international exposure so I would say one advantage that could very much be leveraged in the European context is collaboration with people all around the world and a leadership role in that area great and that leaves me space space is unique but what is the strength of space there in terms of innovation you if you recall space enables so the word if you're looking for one word that describes space in terms of innovation space enables innovation you look at the way satellite communications have transformed the satellite the telecommunications industry we have seen how global positioning satellites have transformed the automotive industry because of navigators and remote sensing is transformed the way we see the world because google earth gives us all the pictures and you can see the front door of somebody and it transformed the way governments must act or you know big companies must act because people cannot google earth can see what's what's happening so if there's one word to describe space we enable innovation so at a time of a time of kind of global austerity budgets and cuts and we've seen cuts certainly in the u.s and elsewhere for things like space that we would view as as luxuries as enablers as opposed to as immediate job creators or or sources of economic is your view sitting from a u.n standpoint that is it what's the european perspective on this is there is there a greater empathy for enabling technologies is there a greater likelihood to embark on blue sky certain large hadron collider type projects is it does europe sit uniquely in the space question before i before i go to europe i was at the issue of europe i was at the telecommunications conference a few months ago and everybody there was saying that there was no decrease in the satellite business for telecommunications so even though we have the recession or whatever people still know that telecommunication satellites are important so in some sectors of space there has not been a drop but europe itself now if it and europe of course follows the trend of the rest of the world we have this what we call disruptive technology equivalent or you know analogous to the pcs and the large computers before because today universities can build small satellites which they can launch into space and they are i tell you quite capable the only problem there is how to make everybody behave themselves because the access to space is now quite easy and inexpensive so from the european point of view i see many universities austria is going to launch its university satellite soon and and there's a lot of sexy technology that's being developed both in the private sector as well as in the european space agency and the different agencies space agencies so let's let's stick with what's working and what's enabling generally speaking your your successes across europe in in different sectors what what should absolutely be preserved we've talked about a few things here that are seemingly cultural so the question of diversity the richness of sitting in a room like this the pursuit of unequivalent unequivocal excellence these kinds of themes what what very practically from a economic standpoint from a political standpoint from a technological or scientific standpoint what's working for you to sort of enable your successes as innovators in in europe what what should be preserved at all cost as we sort of will unwrap this towards what's not working and what kind of recommendations do we need to set forth what absolutely is working um we can start anywhere if anyone's tackle that we're not going to go this way again because then they'll be they'll know what's coming so i who wants to start read do you want to start sure um well i have a particular focus and i see that clearly i see three phases of of innovation based on the scale of an enterprise so i see a startup challenge has discreet and important the small and medium business and then the multinational all of which are doing innovation but they have very different challenges so i feel the kind of going in reverse or the multinationals challenge is that in some ways they have vested interests you know they have a way of doing things they've done them for 20 50 100 years and to change is can be painful disruptive or destructive challenge they face but then again if they sit on their hands as kodak experienced in new york they could get left behind small medium enterprises i think have huge potential for all countries but with financial situations we've recently seen getting access to capital clearly in the uk is now the the primary challenge faced by small medium where i focus and i run a green product incubator for startups the challenge is that most investors venture capitalists even angel investors are too busy to do due diligence on very very small ideas so that's so they can't they struggle with getting anyone's attention and secondly they need advice and so that's what we're trying to do but there's not a lot of it so we hope to encourage that type of support for startups so on one side if we were to look forward what you're advocating is a kind of greater maturity and evolution of the sort of venture climate what what from a startup standpoint is working i mean what are you seeing as as enablers of successful startups in europe that's distinct to europe to all to answer your original question i think the big opportunity we're now facing largely driven by the internet is that uh we have access to information and there are people around the world that can cross collaborate so that's very much working i don't think we've quite realized what's coming and secondly i think that the recognition that the environment is in peril is giving people a real focus now people are obviously inventing and innovating in all sorts of areas so high-tech biotech but you don't need a phd to innovate and the green space it cuts across all sectors so you can be a farmer you can be a a factory floor worker and come up with a really important idea and that actually opens up the scope we don't just need you know college educated students to be part of this so i i i hope that governments and funders recognize that uh they should be looking wide and far at a whole range of new things that will be coming to me i would just spend a second on defining innovation because i think it's important that we have the right concept for innovation many people confuse creativity and innovation creativity is what should i say converting money into ideas an innovation in my vocabulary is converting ideas into money and what that means is that it's the combination of the greatness of the idea multiplied by the ability to bring it to market and so what's the strength of europe in my opinion we have a market structure even a country structure where the small ideas are there we've seen many many disruptive ideas come from europe and we should definitely keep that ability in fact if you look at countries in europe where the most let's say disruptive ideas come from they're typically even small countries and so there is that entrepreneurship that willingness to create ideas the question is whether we're good or not at scale and if you look at many of the disruptive ideas that were created in europe the mp3 file format was created in europe the skype was a european idea they all got scaled somewhere else and and so to your question what is it we need to preserve we need to preserve the entrepreneurship that comes from the diversity and heterogeneous structure that we have in europe with many many many small companies and then we need to add the ability to scale it's a little bit like you need to be good at the first hundred meters but it is a marathon good a good examples of marathon runners in in europe is germany germany is one of those you know long-term thinking willingness to invest even in the crisis and you see germany coming out of the crisis much faster than most countries in europe i think for that reason now the question is how can we combine these two capabilities how can we and when we strongly believe at sap this idea of fostering co-innovation where large and small come together and and there's large companies the multinationals help the small come up with the ideas and scale the ideas and not by taking them over but by giving them platforms on which they can grow an international business much faster that they could stand alone and because we don't have that today they tend to be sold to some big company instead i think that's wrong and it's it's not going to be the future we need the co-innovation of the thousands rather than only the big so so you would sort of characterize the shift here as being from a climate of immediately integrating acquiring these individual diverse startups to kind of co-creating them code evolving them that being a catalyst for scale yeah i think there's a trend of a change in trend where the old mindset was one of centralization you know if you're centralized you can scale and and if you look at the issues we have in europe on the diversity and creating a european something it's very hard to do with a centralistic approach but maybe there is that next generation of thinking where it's a platform and openness where you invite participation of the many rather than central centralization you might achieve the combination of scale and idea much faster and better than buying centralizing everything what's the joseph what's the what's if you sort of take that and the analog from a from a research standpoint and fostering a unified research ecosystem unified ip system unified talent mobility these kinds of enablers of one part of the innovation chain is this pursuit on the commercialization side of perhaps evolving to sort of slightly a more decentralized approach a lot of research in europe has been moving seemingly in the opposite direction is do you do you pick up on that do you sense that do you how do you respond to that from a research standpoint yeah i i worked for a long time in north america and now i'm back since seven years in europe and actually when i decided to come back my american friends told me i must be completely out of my mind to go back to the european union but i i had this sense you know this is actually the place you want to be you know central europe it's this forgotten region but the 170 million people you know well educated they're clever they're hungry you know they want to do something so i actually think this is one of the most interesting places to be and then i had this very weird idea to build the fc bus a loaner of of life sciences unfortunately cannot name by any steam which i would like to do but so and and so we started from zero basically so the the question was really how to create the space in an environment where all my american friends tell me should not go into how do you create the space which attracts the best talents because without getting the right people you know we can talk a nice talk and we get nowhere and and literally after seven years creating a playground a candy store for you know intellectual and infrastructure candy store where we hire the most brilliant people on the planet around it so we we you know we don't have to hide from anybody anymore i think we can compete against anybody we do play in the champions league so so lots of things have changed also when i came the european union uh distributed funds by this huge network grants a friend of mine actually who came from the old soviet union uh told me once the european union became the new soviet union you know you get only your grants if you have somebody from certain countries and and certain companies but also that's changing with the introduction of the european research council so i have a real feeling europe is moving in the right direction and from my own experience what happened now we have now basically 200 people working in our place we have 200 applicants for a single position and the americans are now coming so so this brain drain we have been all talking about and have been exposed and i was one of the people who were drained from this country when i moved to america i have a strong feeling it's actually being coming back to europe what we still lack is is an environment where we can push our ideas into innovation into money and i think this is what we can really learn from the americans and then from the chinese let's let's pick up on this one of the ideas that that um you know is very much uh fundamental to to your institute has been taking lots of little risks and and really being very pro-risk and i know that you've had a hand in in setting up funding apparatuses within europe to sort of fund higher risk research is there do you get the sense that that's well received across the european community uh in terms of funding higher risk research that may or may not have more immediate economic impact instead of funding uh alternative energy but funding things that uh are not even at the level of enablers where there's sort of a nice label for basic real high risk kind of research is is there a uh attitude around that that you're sensing is it changing is it unique in any way uh is it working not working it's unfortunately not not changing in a way i would like to see it uh and the reason is you know where the oldest and the lifts for this oldest the research councils and we invest in biotech and nanotech and everybody had to speak buzzwords but when you really look what worked in the united states the companies didn't develop in delaware because you saved taxes they developed around centers of excellence centers of innovation in san francisco in boston so i think what europe really needs to understand is to to push basic research to push risky projects and then create an environment which enables that uh this risky project is actually being put into real companies and also one reality for us is because having started to biotech companies you know uh when we ask for money if i get 500 000 euros i'm already happy my old friends in the us you know when they start the company they get 50 million dollars and our ideas are as good as theirs but you can bet twice who will win the game in the long term um during uh design helps companies take measured risks and mediate that risk um become more uh conversant with risk are you getting the sense that that the equivalent question about uh design culture within companies is that changing is that unique is that working within your european clients um the pursuit of excellence has long been a attribute as you noted of europe um how is that factoring into sort of design culture design practices within companies uh i mean i think what what's great about the word design now i mean you know design could be used in a board room where it was something five years ago you would have never done it's a thing that now people understand the value of design um i also wanted to answer your previous question um i think there's been an interesting confluence of a lot of different things in the last two to three years that have really changed the landscape when you look at the the world right now um you had obviously this recession that came into play but you also had incredibly disruptive technologies that came in that we never expected would hit the way they hit so you have businesses and people scrambling to figure out um how to structure their even their product life cycles products the life cycles used to be 18 months two years three years i mean when i started in this business they were you know two years you every two two and a half years you know until you used to have a roadmap that was long they're three months now businesses can't even keep up with the demand out there and this is being driven by the public and because of all these changes that's gone on where the public now is demanding right the end user demands and you probably get this with your business all the time they demand what they they tell you what you want and people almost can't keep up with it fast enough so there's a big adjustment that has to go on around funding around doing the research is how how do you get these products into the market that are right i what i see a lot of uh particularly because we work a lot with um investors is there's almost a fear factor too on their side because they don't know what to go after because things are moving so fast um so it's it's a very interesting time but honestly said i haven't how does the how does a three month you know a life cycle and rapid iteration and releasing things in beta this kind of culture of of now rapid innovation i mean how does that sit alongside you know this that we that you characterized earlier on as distinctly european you know this this can't be rapid iterated you can't rapid prototype this is what we associate with being european how does that resonate with your european clients well i think there's a big difference between software development and producing a building right so obviously you still have to create a a building the way you've always done but i think in software everyone's accepted that there's actually a stickiness to having a beta product out there and and being able to go back to your client you know we've had several you know apple being of course one of them uh companies that have taught us that it's okay to put products that are not that are very very good but you accept that updates will come that it will get better and that's part of the relationship that you begin to have it's a very very it's very different than what it was two years ago um yeah i wanted to comment on that because i uh i see that exactly the same thing that this speed of innovation particular when it's um as easy to distribute a software um what that does it comes back to my point earlier that we've had phases of centralization to be powerful what we are doing right now as a company even though we are one of the big players is that we are empowering teams of 10 to work directly with the customer and figure it out don't ask headquarter you know because it takes too long and that means that you have this decentralization this extreme empowerment of people um that have creative ideas the only thing i demand is that they stay loyal to a strategy so you have to be articulate on your strategy i strongly believe you need a platform so you don't get chaos you need something to build on that's consistent but then you have to let loose you have to kind of unleash the innovation um of your employees by empowering them decentrally and by inviting a whole ecosystem we have more than two million people in our sap developers network and we've only 14 000 developers at sap and you imagine the power of inspiring two million people or 10 million people just look at what happened with apple and their way of opening up an ecosystem approach so extreme decentralization based on platforms and the question i have is could that be an idea for europe that we think of europe not as trying to you know make common rules for everything but we try and make platforms what about a healthcare platform what about a research platform where the internet was a platform that articulated a certain protocol for how things can be decentralized and still connect what if we could do that for some of the major challenges we have in europe and with that you get the power of being europe and you get the power of decentralization which is the trend because of the innovation speed let's pick up on that idea of platforms i think that's an interesting one so so from a public sector standpoint um and from a social entrepreneurship standpoint so other other buttresses to that kind of platform um how has uh how have you seen the changes in terms of public sector private sector collaboration are you seeing that within a space context is there more initiatives to share risk create government funded platforms and basic research that startups can live off of what's what's your sense and also from a social entrepreneurship standpoint are there sort of the large-scale kind of platform social issues that that we're getting the sense europe is tackling commonly that are maybe instigators of these kinds of platforms just talking i can start with space um for more than 10 years now the private sector investment in space has exceeded the investment by governments um this is good in many ways but our so here i like to pick up an issue which you brought up in the beginning which is um what should be preserved in terms of setting up all these platforms and enabling innovation is that our governance the the instruments for governance does not cannot catch up with the fact that private sector is investing more in space now because if you look at the outer space treaties um and they're all the united nations treaties and uh conventions which forms the body for international space regime they do not recognize the private sector and there's a lot of um ways now by which we'll have to include the private sector in in in launching um and everything else but i think the important thing that we need to look at in europe for instance we now have the european code of conduct in space and that's very innovative because um it's a way of making sure all the european uh countries behave in in a in a manner that will preserve um space to enable everyone to be creative or uh innovative and to support the private sector entry into space um i i see it that way what about social entrepreneurship example um well i think it's a very interesting idea i would maybe start less from the tech side not coming from that uh field but i think that there are some cultural platforms actually that could be uh could bring everyone together on common principles and then but equally have the diversity that is in europe and one of just as i think a good example that um is around sort of sustainable food and so in uh and it manifests in different ways but i think everyone is recognizing we need to if there's big droughts or big energy shortages how do we feed ourselves and how does the world feed itself uh in idly it has a slow food movement which is quite profound it's actually that the opposite of rapid prototyping but you know how do we actually go back to some basics i think there's some important thinking there uh in the uk the organic food movement uh equally powerful um albeit controversial globally uh so i i i agree that finding some common philosophical grounding and technical grounding could be very useful uh one thing you noted there and and let's use that as a launchpad into one more issue and then take your questions as well um uh you know so we talk about food and clearly there are moments where we've seen uh uh cultural resistance we've seen a variety of resistance to sort of innovation when it came to food when it's come to food in europe um two aspects here one is clearly there's not been a homogeneous reaction across europe to innovations in those kinds of sectors it's been heterogeneous across different countries there's not been a common european response to gmo or a common european response to many things does there need to be a common european view uh is that is that is that even a a reasonable premise to strive for or is that kind of inconceivable um but without it uh you know can you foster these kinds of social platforms if if there isn't a kind of common view on things like food or gmo across europe uh i think that there would be i i think europe in in facing the challenges that we're facing has to come together in some big principles and i mean certainly in the us you know with 300 million people when they decide to go to the moon they get there and i don't i think it'd be hard for small countries in europe to do so but they can europe really not afford to come up with a common energy strategy particularly with a partnership with north africa to get solar i mean why that isn't being done you know with with it maybe that because it's there's no central leader to kind of set that proverbial north star goal of which we could all be driving towards is is hindering us maybe just needs to be some louder leadership saying let's we have everything to gain by collaboration here let's create a platform let's work together you'd welcome that as an entrepreneur well you're always as an entrepreneur looking at how to find your own way through that but i think on some of these big issues uh i think that kind of collaboration would be profound we're gonna say not just to just to pick up on this question so you know the in this country the second worst word in the public is actually genetics so being a geneticist always found this interesting to be actually you know on the on the dark side of society so i think we can bring a lot to the table and it's probably the century of genetics and genetics will provide lots of solutions to food safety food security growing plants somewhere but that's and you know that's how the politicians believe they can score on these issues so it's it's very tricky and that's what i find a little disheartening in the in this europe that is these little units with the little local governments who who tried to play to the clientele and actually like this idea of platforms because this is where really the european union could come in play great platforms have great visions one reason why space exploration what is so successful is because you know there's this singular idea to build a space station which where many countries get together and make a single push the same for certain the physics people somehow manage to lobby the european union americans to build this big accelerator to do the research and i think there are some unique opportunities you know to just make a push against cancer you know just tell all of us and have a general push from industry from governments from the european union to move in this direction pull resources pull brains and really you know create this space exploration for certain parts of life sciences i think this is a great idea we have a unique opportunity now because we suddenly have connection to everyone there's like six million six billion mobile phones out there connected somehow so we are on individual level connecting people and this is an opportunity we've never had before and and so i truly believe that the idea generation must be a decentralized thing the question is can we facilitate that so that we don't invent the same things i'm from danmark okay i don't know if you know but recently danmark launched a rocket so danmark is becoming a space country and this little rocket was built by an entrepreneurial team of private people who have this great vision okay what should i say i believe that if we had shared in europe maybe we could have gotten further out and had a bigger impact instead of trying to rebuild what's already known why don't we build on on what's already known and and and advance and if we don't solve that in europe i'm deeply concerned because growth is happening somewhere else right now it's not in europe and while we have great people i'm not sure we have enough focus on education and research in europe and i am also concerned with the complexity we're trying to solve this problem how do we get common rules through you know rules and regulation and committees and i think it's a well-known fact that the camel was a horse created by a committee you know and and so committees is not necessarily the best way to progress things could we find other ways to get that decentral innovation power focused and leveraged also because innovation by its nature if you think about it and you talk about disruption it's it's always about breaking the rules so here we are we'll set up the structures which are needed because we need the funding and we do need the research and we do need to educate our people at the end of the day you got to let you've got to give people the opportunity to break the rules too because that's what that's what done it and that's why you have these you know these people that go off in their in their corners and go and do their thing because they don't want to be burdened by again all of the top-down rules that come at them right so they just go through the back door and they do things so you have this interesting dichotomy that happens that you have to allow and i think that's what you talked about particularly in in the silicon valley or in boston is you have somehow that balance has come into play right where you've got funding that will fund this um and but you know that you're what you're looking for or or people that break those rules too it seems like this tension between um collaboration and and pursuing national competitiveness remains uh despite pursuit of of common principles common currency common governance structures um almost a reluctance to give up some national competitiveness despite it it almost seems like this is a an opportunity for europe to show the world how to do this is something that frankly the world has to figure out now is common goals common innovation innovation for global good and seems like something europe could help us all see let's take some of your questions and then we'll we'll go back to a few more here yeah do we have a red jacketed person thank you i'm a little bit concerned with the panel i mean firstly i would say are we all sitting there saying we're comfortable with the way innovation is happening in europe for me i i'm very uncomfortable so i'd like the panel to talk about the conditions for creating an environment for innovation we heard yesterday the russian federation deciding to create the second silicon valley why didn't europe create the second silicon valley i'm beset by corporate fear i read the other day that over 60 of european countries ban the use of facebook and twitter in the workplace that's nonsense so there's corporate fear i think playing here and secondly it took us half of the conversation before the word risk was mentioned so i'd argue have we got an appetite in europe for risk or are we just too comfortable one of the speakers talked about breaking the rules we don't break the rules in europe we love rules we behave by rules and we punish people who break rules i guess these are why these are the game changers anyone want to talk a little yeah i have a very big passion for your question because i am i totally agree with you i actually think we have a pretty challenging situation in europe so i so far the questions were around what are the good things about europe and i find good things in europe but in a global economy i'm concerned i'm concerned because we have we don't have our act together yet i'm concerned because we don't have the same appetite as i see in other countries we have six thousand people in india i mean these people get up in the morning and they have one thing in their mind it is becoming better than anyone else in this world and they work long hours they educate themselves to the extreme and they are extremely innovative we have this sometimes perception in europe that you know you do the smart things in europe and you outsource the dummy tasks to some low-cost location if you are in india and china for the price you're making a big mistake you're there for the talent because there's lots of great talent so in that global economy i am actually concerned as concerned as you what i'm saying is that there are some benefits in europe there are some cultural historic things that we dealt with in the past which could be of an opportunity but we are not tackling that today in a consistent enough way and if we go down the path of continuously doing what we do today we will not compete in the future and so i'm here also to say wake up europe there are opportunities in europe but we need to change the way we do things i don't think more rules will help i think platforms might help we lost the whole consumer world to the americans and we are losing the next battles in many new innovative industries as well to the chinese and the indians so i am i'm absolutely where you are i'm suggesting a different approach in europe that we don't look for the rules and regulations so we sit in long meetings and take years and years to come up with something that's anyway the least common denominator and therefore has no impact but that we foster platform thinking and we identify the five or eight platforms that we want to drive global leadership on innovation on and then we start getting our act together we invest we inspire people and i haven't even talked about the demographic problem that we have if you take the aging population alone i mean these young people who come out of school these days my kids need to be um genius you know they need to work for three people uh to make this equation work if we all live 10 years longer and the inefficiency in health care is unbelievable we cannot continue like that with an aging population so i'm where you are i'm not giving up though i'm a european headquartered company with lots of success and innovation and i'm saying let's tackle this problem in a different way because individually is not enough then everyone will do a small rocket and it won't get us to the moon another question my name is Wagner innovation institute uh regarding the idea of platforms i'm optimistic for skin and avian countries but i'm fully pessimistic for the rest of europe based on 20 years of experience on the ground and a given example the romanians set up an electronic procurement platform already 10 years ago none of the neighboring countries it's adopted because the dislike of mania the same happened with the bpb platform of hungary excellent but none of the neighboring countries wanted to adopt it because the dislike hungary and just to end up with an example a domestic example from austria the city of riana set up a free e-government service and the government of upper austria 150 kilometers far away was not ready to take a free example of e-government service why because the city of government is one the socialist and the city of lower upper austria is one the conservatives so these are the mental barriers in europe it's not a lack of information information or communication the european union already abandoned seven years ago to fund platforms we have plenty of platforms in europe it's a mental problem it's a historical problem europe was completely divided between the nations and unless this is not solved i believe the platform idea will not succeed at least not in the south of europe so you want to comment yeah maybe so maybe i can bring a counter argument i actually believe sciences would be a great opportunity for the european union to integrate people because we are completely international we speak one language we have this one common goal to figure out how things work and actually strongly believe if there's a strong push to use the sciences like the euro to integrate the countries i think there's a enormous opportunity so actually would i i'm you know i'm in the same space i can completely confirm what you're saying here but i think we should not just give up on this i think there's a huge opportunity and especially the sciences should be taught in this place should be should be the next project in my opinion the next vision in my opinion for the european union because at the end of the day you know what made this country rich it was innovation it was good scientists driving you know take risks finding new things and i think this is exactly what we need for european union and of course to to combine this with you know with scientists live to in our little holes no we don't we're not happy if people tell us what we should do so it's a fine line between creating the bell laboratories of europe to create the space for freedom for for people who take think outside of the box who take complete risks do things where everybody tells you it's cannot work it will not work in five years later as you show them that it can work so i think there's an opportunity we should not miss and i think which should be a real project for the european union i i also think things happen out of necessity sometimes you know you're forced into doing things that you never thought would have happened and when you talk about what's going on in india and china and africa i mean innovation happens there also often out of necessity because you know you they don't have the things that we have here in europe or or in other parts of the world and so what's happening now what i see what's happening in europe it's it's a glimmer of light is because of what happened in this recession because of how bad things got people had to look at things differently and the question is how much are they going to push it you know how much is someone going to push and just say i'm not going to accept the status quo and that's what it takes you know it does it is that rule breaker that's going to get through some of the systems and say look at this look at what we can accomplish here and maybe it's a small group of of countries it's not everyone and people then gather on but that's usually what it takes to make that that type of change so there's a culture in europe that that resists this kind of thing that we're hearing about in these sort of two somewhat pessimistic questions um is europe prepared to give up to sacrifice some of the things that give it its comfort in its culture in order to be able to catalyze this kind of risk taking and frankly this kind of investment because you take it out of somewhere in order to you know advance this kind of risk taking is there something that's is it intractable is it a question of resource reallocation is it a fundamental cultural shift and is that even possible and something desirable i always i always look at this question because the question comes and you think if you don't do it what's going to happen somebody else with india and china will get better at it for example right african if you don't do it you'll be relegated to being in a in a second or third or fourth place and so the question is is that desire there to get and and i don't believe in in revolution as much as the evolution in terms of innovation right i don't think i think you start that incrementally with a smaller group with people that can show maybe it is in the sciences that can show that there there is that change that can happen because it will happen it always does and the question is are you know will they i don't think europe is going to be left out in the cold i think you're going to have a group that's going to begin to form a force here but we need to work on three levels in my opinion first of all as a big company i think we should take much more responsibility i understand the political issues and so companies that have the means should take much more respond don't sit back and wait for politicians to solve these problems you know we are launching the idea of a business web we're opening up for many other global companies to be part of this and try and create that platform for connectivity between companies and if we if we sit and wait for it to be decided it'll never happen so do it just do it and i think that commitment from companies to put more money on innovation even in tough times is a very important one and in particular the large companies to be opening up and teaming up and getting things done once you've done that you can go to the national levels and say hey are we good enough in education i don't think so in europe why don't we leverage the fact that we can offer in europe one year in Rome one year in London one year in Paris one year in Moscow one year in Prague as an education we're not leveraging that and so that's a national challenge that needs to be resolved to say how do we marginalize our education system so europe becomes the place you want to educate yourself and that attracts talent and that is the foundation for innovation and and and you need of course the national support for innovation for r&d etc and then comes the european but it has come probably in that order where i would argue why don't we launch five platforms for europe maybe it's an r&d maybe it's in healthcare well i don't know where we foster focused collaboration across countries because in that world there are no countries the internet knows no boundaries or did you want to i wanted to pick up on what dorain had said about necessity being the mother of invention and i think two big things that have happened recently actually are an opportunity that i've yet to be fully realized and one is that the economic crisis i think gave a big wake up called everyone that the economy is moving east and actually we got to get out of our chairs we can't just things aren't going to be the same but the second is i think the recognition that's of scarcity of resources that are you know oil is an obvious one but there's plenty of others and i think that the that that fear that we may run out of things is percolating in the minds of millions of people around the world but europeans equally and i think there is and it's a real necessity you know if we can't eat if we can't travel if we don't have things that we would like uh i think that that can catalyze a lot of opportunity so i'd i actually think that that uh there may be room for historical sluggishness vis-à-vis the american experience but i think europe may have as good a chance at pioneering a new green innovation revolution as anyone let's go ahead yeah i'd like to make a comment rather than answer you know provide a solution i think i might be the only non european this room i can't see the audience but you know as a non european i see europe is extremely exciting because of the diversity and i love the idea where you say you know why don't we have education one year in moscow and one year in london because if you study what um how the Nobel laureates invent or innovate every time they encounter a new or somewhere with a not in the comfort zone as when i have to come from lesia to a german speaking country and if i have to then speak russian i think that um triggers a lot of um new excitement and that's where i think europe is exciting so i i can see the pessimism but i think europe is very exciting from the non european view let's take another couple questions i'm not sure okay uh my name is john anderson from nordic innovation and uh just a few observations here because last week i was at a similar conference in the in the us and it's very interesting to to listen to the debate in europe because it seems to me that we always have kind of when we discuss innovation it's always in the context of science and research together and seems that we got mixed ourselves up in the sense that if we look at it i very much agree with what was said from mr snabe that what innovation is and innovation is not the same as the research by definition most innovation is focused and it's mostly focused on solving a specific problem whereas research at the heart is about being open and discovery and invention so that's one thing i think we got our self mixed up in europe when we discuss innovation number two is that we very much focus on the the framework conditions business framework conditions which is fine but i'm not so sure that it's a uh precondition for being competitive and innovative take the example you have two companies with the same framework conditions how do we explain that company a is performing better than company b within the same sector i think we should ask ourselves that question when we discuss innovation especially from the european commission and these uh framework programs now thirdly when europe had success stories there are not many of the last 10 15 years but it was when we came up with a common standard or platform gsm so that's absolutely necessary to do that again and i think the worldwide web this was an initiative by companies going together and facilitated this so i think there can be no discussion but if we don't get focused in europe on as was said earlier but my question is to the panel what is why is it that we and what do you think about this research versus innovation maybe we should separate these two issues and discuss them in separate rooms to get a clear perspective in the future anybody want to separate research from innovation um well as um so first of all i i i defined innovation the same way as you did so i do believe that at the end of the day we need to convert ideas into money it's not that i'm you know money greedy it is that without the monetization of something you don't get any impact nobody's interested and so you have to get an impact otherwise it's just a great idea we have been successful in sap in working with research and and so i think there is an opportunity to bring research which is as you said because you you're more free and if you're not that free it it will probably never happen but my opinion is that the brown groundbreaking ideas happen when you think more freely and i think there is a world where you can separate the two concerns but connect them so that the right ideas the breakthroughs get monetized much faster we have one example at sap where research with the has a platinum institute in berlin caused a breakthrough in how you store data in computers and you can now analyze data um 10 000 times faster than you could before um now why is that important because the access to information the amount of information this world will double every 18 months so there will be too much information and and so far with the help of google we've only learned to find the hay in the haystack but the haystack is growing and we need to be better in finding the needle and and so suddenly you need new technologies and this was a breakthrough because we went with research and then at a certain stage said we will commoditize we will monetize this build the right products in record time by the way very decentral very close with customers and then bring it to market so you're right it's two different concerns but we need to couple them when the opportunity is there otherwise research will happen a great idea will be invented and nobody will take advantage i agree with you i mean i think we that was a world uh past i mean we all heard the stories of xerox park and all this interesting uh you know research that live there until someone turned it into a product i think because as you know i said before the the life cycles are changing and moving so quickly the idea to link those two together becomes even more important the idea to take just particularly in technology that's moving so quickly right when we're trying to look for innovative ideas to solve uh the fuel problem you know to take those research ideas and and you know maybe researchers by their nature are not product developers but to link them up with people who know how to do that i think becomes really really important in in the world and we'll move this quicker and we'll help us get to that next level so since i'm a researcher i hope i'm innovative sometimes and i actually believe research actually provides solutions to problems the real issue is and i think how the word innovation is used here is to to take this solve problem or whatever we have done with it take it the next step and make money out of it so from my own history we once made this mutant mouse which didn't have any teeth which turned out to be the master gene for bone loss and now the estimates are this will make three to four billion revenue to accompany in in the united states for example that's the issue um any other questions anything so let me ask one more here and then we can start to wrap up um so we've left sort of the the talent question and the education question out of the out of the discussion so far and certainly one of the newer recognitions in the united states now is that uh the state of preparing kind of the next generation for these kinds of uh challenges and culture um has been inadequate grossly inadequate in fact uh even the way uh it's measured around the world and and what it means to foster uh the kinds of skill sets whether they are scientific and technical and engineering and math or bringing art and design into it um i'm going to be speaking with the congress in the us recently in the next couple weeks about bringing art and design into science education what's the what's the view from uh from your standpoint in europe about uh preparing either your next workforce uh your uh undergrads that your your postdocs uh the people who may want to dream about space in the future um what's your view what's your sense of responsibility around these issues and and uh do you have some recommendations in terms of what europe needs to do to to think about preparedness i'll take that up first um if you're thinking about um preparing the next generation of the human resource of the people of course then go back to education and how you teach them to be critical thinking critically and all that but i'd like to go back to this uh issue that i brought up that um in order to preserve um in order to be able to continue to innovate using our space assets in order to make sure the future generations can still access that space we think it's huge but it is very fast getting congested so i would like to go back to the issue of um in order to preserve for the things for the future generation we have to have those um rules and regulations i know that whenever i talk to the university students when they are you know building this innovative satellite the last thing they want to hear about is um rules and regulations but i tell them that rules and regulations are there to protect their innovation it's not there to inhibit their their innovation because you you could have the most fantastic um you know technology breaking satellites in the world if you let if you set it up to space and you don't follow the rules you're going to be shut down and so um i feel that that that kind of issue is not sometimes properly brought up in the within the innovation uh circle in the space arena at least if that's on on talent yeah let's go ahead why i come back just again to use a us europe uh analogy uh growing up we were continually told told those young people that you know we that anyone could be president and it's really is a truism that there is opportunity if you apply yourself and uh in the european context you know certainly with young people we come across uh you know trying to ensure that they feel that that their that their efforts can be viable is the critical point if they feel that there's a chance and they apply themselves and so i but i think kind of having an emblem of that is is would very much help having the bill gates of the net in our space it's green innovation if we can get one big success story then 10 000 more may follow so to my mind championing and finding those next generation of innovators and getting them profile is important so recently i listened to some radio program talking about gustav mahala and to my surprise gustav mahala in his high school had to learn natural sciences it was actually a topic called sciences we have no topic in the school which is called sciences so actually i think what would be absolutely essential not just for this country but for many european countries to introduce this topic to schools uh we have to learn my kids have to learn latin and and things like this but they learn maybe 10 hours in the entire school life about dna so which of course will be you know drive economies in the future so so first thing i believe there must be a strong push for public education starting from seven-year-olds and to teach them one thing we have been doing in our place we created the lab space for kids so we had more than 13 000 kids already in our institute you know they learn about the flies and worms and other things and it's not to indoctrinate them it's to to tell them you know it's the to be scientist is the coolest thing you can be in the world uh you know you can solve problems you get up in the morning you don't know what's happening in the evening you might get rich one day it's actually a decent job and and this is exactly what we want to show them and and i think the third one is sciences as you know and you did amazingly and do amazingly in the us and somewhere else sciences is not just to solve problems because that's what we learn it's about learning how to ask this question why and i think a society where people are critical don't believe everything they're told is i mean that's the society we have to strive for so sciences in my opinion is is very political and and it's it's a very important issue to deal with i i think education is the big one of the biggest blockers we have now because um because of across the board just you know uh no matter what country you're in cuts in education that have gone on um we've taken the curiosity out of education so we allow children to have you know good basic education and we've taken the absolute curiosity and if you don't have parents that are pushing it you get a lot of children that are are coming out you know vanilla and don't understand how to ask questions or have a fear factor about challenging the rules and and that's that's a fundamental problem it starts there i know when you know i hire a lot of curious people and it's very very difficult and it's particularly difficult in europe here for for us to hire we have a severe hiring shortage here for us and the type of people that we look for who are very talented but innately curious and problem solvers hard to come by yeah i must say i'm i'm concerned for europe on education i for me everything starts with education my that that's how you six you're successful long term it is having the smartest people and in a world where many of the tasks are being automated that is the only thing left that differentiates you i think we are in europe the average is not good enough and the elite is not good enough and we are not paying enough attention to this problem and if we don't do that soon this will cost us dearly in a generation where we needed the most i look at india i visited many times of course i it in india engineering school quality wise they see themselves as mit just i it in india india produces 250 000 top engineers today i estimate that number will go beyond 1 million now i come from a country with 5 million people that gives you a perspective there's a 520 million people in india below 25 years you start understanding what education is going to mean to the next generations and our ability in europe i feel we need to take much more aggressive and focused effort around education and start leveraging the diversity which was your first question what is great about europe it is our culture of diversity so why don't we have classrooms with international people why don't we have classrooms that cross the boundaries of educational areas because it is in the boundaries between areas that no things happen i don't think energy will be solved without having automotive in the room the utility in the room and software in the room so where's that classroom where that's happening and by the way without the design thinking method methodology where you design for sustainability and to end life cycle um cradle to cradle we're going to be out of resources anyway and and those educational opportunities we're totally missing today and we must do something about that and we can in europe and it's time we do that i think it's a good point to leave on um i think you've heard a really wonderful set of ideas about what is unique to europe and what needs to be preserved and also a recognition of what some of the challenges are but i think you've heard despite challenges to the to the status quo and to the state of europe there's a great deal of optimism here uh from these disruptors these game change thanks very much