Spot on Mr Draghi: Now let’s get down to business!

In his long-awaited The Future of European Competitiveness report Mario Draghi paints a worrying picture for Europe. We are lagging behind and the gap is getting bigger with some of the numbers quoted being indeed alarming! (see infographic below)

Mr Draghi has highlighted a critical pathway for economic growth and resilience to bolster competitiveness: invest more in innovation and focus on its impact.

Europe needs more disruptive innovation and it needs to keep it in Europe. It needs more scaleups and more technology companies. More can be done to create a stronger and better financing environment that boost public investment and lure in more private investments including from VCs. And the single market should operate as much as possible as one: more integrated and with fewer barriers being also aware that overregulation stifles innovation and it slows down its adoption. ?It also needs more world-class research organizations which are also translating great research into products and services.? Draghi also highlights the importance of increasing the number of companies engaged in R&D, new product development and the adoption of innovative solutions. Last but not least, developing a culture and the skills for innovation. It is not just about building a workforce fit for the future, providing both the hard- and soft-skills so much needed to navigate through the future. It is also about equipping the next generation and the generation after next with the risk-appetite needed for innovation, be it as a researcher, an entrepreneur but also as an investor.

Mr Draghi’s report serves, most likely, as a very last wake-up call! ?Now the true challenge is to put words into action. This is where strategy and implementation need to work hand-in-hand to deliver. And they do need to be tightly coupled and work in feedback loops.

Yet it all comes down to securing the necessary – and particularly high – investments, finding new ways to coordinate policies and simplify decision-making and implementation processes, all the while maximising the impact of collective efforts.

At the national level, Cyprus and RIF have been making and will continue to make concrete efforts in this direction. The country’s Strategy for R&I is a testament to that, and many of the matters raised in the Draghi report, including the need to promote academic excellence, world-leading institutions and infrastructures while fuelling business success, are similarly raised in the strategy.

And at the RIF, we have proved our determination to do this time and again. Our impact-driven programmes include measures that facilitate access for known stakeholders and newcomers alike, they drive greater private investments in R&D and boost research excellence and business success, supporting research teams in increasing synergies at the EU level and making the most of opportunities available through Horizon Europe.

By optimizing our process and putting in the hard work, we managed to reduce our average time to grant to a mere 7 months and nowadays deliver payments to beneficiaries on an average of 61 days from the funding request. We continue to look for new ways to support the local ecosystem and contribute to EU efforts to raise private investments: the DISRUPT programme paves the way along with the rest of our Innovation Programmes, while newly introduced programmes such as New Product Development Capacity Building programme aim to increase the capacities of local companies.

Owning up to our shortcomings is a crucial step toward making progress. Finding new ways to leap ahead and daring to take decisive action when and where needed is, however, the only way forward.

The future belongs to those who innovate, and it’s time for us to seize that future for it tomorrow may be too late.