Austria is one of the very first countries in the world to have developed a national Open Innovation Strategy. Already at the phase of elaboration, the Austrian government attached much importance on the promotion of collaboration between industry, science, public administration and society. For having an open participatory process interested parties from a wide range of areas had the possibility to actively participate in shaping this national OI-strategy via workshops and an online-consultation. The result was a catalogue of 14 measures aiming to boost a national culture of open innovation, to form innovation networks and to strengthen public involvement in research programmes, to name only a few.
On the 1st of December 2016 this Open Innovation Strategy was presented to the public (see document below). The key note with the subject “Openness as a Catalyst for Innovation” in front of more than 200 participants was held by no one less than the EU-Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas.
He was emphasising on the following points:
- Europe will fall back when just using traditional ways of innovation.
- The biggest challenge is to find a way to break the silos so that peoples from different sectors, backgrounds and curricula can start together more effectively
- Open Innovation is the key enabler to evolve from incremental innovation to market creating innovation.
During the event partners of the S2S-project had the opportunity to present our S2S-project in a nutshell to Mr Moedas. The questions he brought up, especially regarding collaborative RDI activities:
- Have you managed to bring the digital world into your research projects?
- What are you doing to market the results of your collaborative research projects?
Some food for thoughts and he asked to keep him updated on the project.
