A Decade of Transformation: The Evolution of the CY Research and Innovation Ecosystem
Theodoros Loukaidis
Director General at Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation
Cyprus is 10th out of 27 EU Member States and is a strong innovator for a third year in a row.
Wind back the clock 10 years: The country was an ‘Innovation Follower’ ranked 14th at 90% of the then EU average. Today the country stands at 106.3% of the EU average and is recording the greatest performance improvement across Member States according to the European Innovation Scoreboard.
We did travel a great distance, and fast we did!
Ten years ago there were 9 Universities and 2 public Research Institutes. Today there are 12 Universities, 7 established Centres of Excellence?co-funded by the Republic of Cyprus and the EC’s Teaming for Excellence Programme and over 12 Research Institutes. There are also more than 3000 enterprises with innovation activities and 503 startups and scaleups, by far more than 10 years ago!
Today we have circa 3500 (est.) researchers up from about 2200 in 2013.
At the end of Framework-Programme 7 (FP7) in 2014, Cyprus had managed to secure?€93M. It secured €320M?in the period 2014-2020 in Horizon 2020. And in Horizon Europe, we are already noticing an increase in our overall performance given that the country has already secured?€258M with 3.5 more years to go in the programme.
As noted in the EIS 2024, Cyprus went from an embryonic ecosystem to a rather dense ecosystem, given the size of the country.
There?is exceptional talent with extensive international experience, evidenced by significant brain circulation given the number of Cypriot researchers undertaking PhDs abroad, doing post-docs abroad and then returning to Cyprus but also the increasing number of foreigners who chose to come and work in Cyprus. There are people from all around the world and Cyprus is today a far more cosmopolitan place than what it used to be. All these highly skilled individuals are joining the local ecosystem and contribute to our efforts to make it an even more international and even more globally interconnected ecosystem. We are continuously enhancing our networks of international cooperation and building on the considerable potential present across various sectors.
In fact, Cyprus had the largest performance increase (+74%) among member states since 2017 in the EIS attractive research systems dimension and in the Innovators dimension we went from 77.8 to 170.6 compared to the EU average.
Excellent research is on the rise, evidenced among others by the?20 ERC Frontier Grants?secured by outstanding researchers in Cypriot institutions,?7 of which were in fact secured in the past 3 years, indicating an increase in our overall performance in this prestigious programme. And the scientific publications among the 10% most cited now stand at 119.5 vis-à-vis 66 compared to the EU average in 2014. This is a testament to the high-quality research undertaken at local research organisations.?
And Innovation is happening! From biotech, to cleantech, foodtech, sportstech, fintech, proptech, healthtech, and many more. 4000+ entrepreneurs dare to think big and act bigger, making products and services available from Cyprus to the world.
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Our policy mix addresses and caters for the needs of different stakeholders within our national ecosystem. Through strategic foresight, we are developing initiatives that will enable the country to thrive.
The funding programmes we have introduced and will continue to announce in the coming years are?focused to reinforce our strengths, address the weaknesses and shortcomings identified in previous years and make the most of opportunities!
These funding programmes are complemented?by important tax incentives and measures to attract talent and businesses?(startups and established enterprises alike), including an?effective corporate tax rate of 2.5% on income earned from IP assets.? In addition, there are incentives for skilled individuals.
Truth of the matter is, Cyprus has made great strides in these 10 years. It is nowadays the only country in the South of Europe to be in the elite group of Strong or Leading Innovators of the EIS. And we want to do more and better! Keep on rising!
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Sources:
1.????? European Innovation Scoreboard 2024 – European Commission
2.????? Reinventing our economy from within - McKinsey & Co 2023
3.????? Eurostat
Angel Investor | Supporting Female Founders | Co-Founder of Flo Health
3 个月Well done Cyprus! Looking forward for new achievements!
Internacional Consultant | Researcher | Trainer | Mentor Innovation, Strategy & Change Management International Security & Arms Control
3 个月This is great news for Cyprus and the new generations of Cypriots! The increase of universities, R&D groups, researchers and start-ups demonstrates a stable consolidating of the local R&D ecosystem. One of the issues rising is how this high cognitive and tech system, which has a dynamic competitive character within the European R&D ecosystem, can become more linked to the Cypriot traditional market economy, which is family-oriented and it is currently trying to reinvent itself by young highly educated family members that wish to bring in the culture of change management to their family business. For that to occur, the experience from Latin-American is that there is a necessity to form R&D managers who can act as "translators" between the academic-research community and the local traditional market ecosystem, in order to motivate and facilitate market innovation, product innovation and business innovation in the Cypriot family business, driving in all the knowledge and tech that is generated within the R&D ecosystem to the daily reality Cypriots. What is your opinion on this?
look forward to the next 10 years.