Download Mobile services: Is service innovation also for the South

Opening speech
DG ENTR Director Georgette Lalis
“Mobile services: Is service innovation also for the South? Is the region of
Athens a hotspot for innovation in the field of mobile services? If yes why?”
An event organised by the European Commission’s Enterprise and Industry
Directorate-General in cooperation with the KIS Platform and the Region of
ATTIKA
CORALLIA CLUSTER Facility, Athens, Greece
3 December 2010
Honourable Secretary of State,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
1. It is my great pleasure today to participate in this event
organised under the Europe INNOVA initiative and the
Platform on service innovation. I am also happy to be here,
for the first time, in this well-known fertile environment for
business that CORALLIA offers today to Greece, the broader
region and Europe.
2. Uncertainty is probably the word which fits the best the
economic situation of many countries today, at global scale.
Uncertainty in the financial markets, in businesses and in the
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public sector. I have to say this is not the best environment
for innovation. Already the impact of the financial and
economic crisis to European economy and innovation is very
important. According to recent statistics, the EU has lost in
the order of 6 million jobs and 1000€ Bn annual GDP. To
help the European economy getting back on track and
tackling major society challenges, such as climate change,
energy and resource scarcity, health and ageing, our leaders
endorsed the Europe 2020 Strategy proposed by the
European Commission. Knowledge, research and innovation
are at the heart of this strategy. The recently adopted
Communication on the "Innovation Union" puts more "flesh
to the bones" to this ambitious EU2020 strategy. The
Innovation Union flagship initiative, which is part of the
Europe 2020 strategy, proposes a number of concrete actions
and strategies with the aim to strengthen the knowledge base
of the EU, to remove bottlenecks, and tackle societal
challenges:
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 Favourable framework conditions, like a single European
Patent and the free movement of knowledge are crucial
elements of this new strategy;
 Setting the right incentives and encouraging a more risk taking
public procurement that acts in favour of innovation are crucial
tasks for the public entities in the Member States and regions.
 Finally,
providing
enterprises
with
the right financial
instruments to leverage risk and provide equity is part of the
actions we intend to launch next year.
 But we must never forget: it is industry and in particular the
small and medium-sized enterprises which translate ideas into
products, profit and jobs. Therefore, smart legislation combined
with well targeted public intervention are the tools to create an
fertile environment supporting emerging industries and creative
entrepreneurs.
2. We all agree that research is absolutely necessary for
developing new technologies and market opportunities. But
without innovation that successfully turns research results
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into new or improved products and services, more research
does not pay off. Many
3. European countries today struggle to get out from this
difficult situation and feed again people with confidence. For
building again the future, innovation is a key. Young people,
as you all, are the architects of our future society and we
should trust and help you as much as possible at all levels.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
1. The main objective of this platform we discuss today is to
promote innovation in services, aiming to create new markets
and support the emergence of new industries in Europe. I believe
that innovative services can create new businesses and jobs but
also has the potential to change effectively every modern
economy.
2. The innovative mobile services in particular have enormous
potential for the modernization of an economy as they affect and
change radically several other service sectors such as advertising
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and financial services. Mobile services can create new business,
and this is a huge opportunity for all countries, such as Greece,
which are not currently at the forefront of technological
development, despite some significant initiatives in the country.
According to the latest European Innovation Scoreboard, Greece
remains among the weak countries, and to change that, will
require a great effort and some time. There are several ways to
support innovation, and I wanted to mention here just three.
3. The most common and perhaps the easiest aapproach is by
raising funds for research and development. In Greece, only a
few part of innovative products and services developed are
based on research, compared with the average of EU
countries. This approach of radically increase funds for
R&D, is neither easy and feasible, especially today, nor
sufficient to cover big delays relatively fast.
4. I must stress that what is often overlooked is that most of the
innovations we see today is not based solely on research, not
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only in Greece, but also in countries like Finland, Sweden and
Germany, countries that are in the first posts of innovation.
Technological innovation is important, but equally important is
the non-technological innovation as well. With this in mind,
countries which cannot afford to invest too much on
technological innovation can at the same time work and further
develop non-technological innovation. This type of innovation is
highly correlated with the smart combination of existing
technologies, developing new business models and developing
innovative services. This can yield results sometimes quicker
than large investments only on technological innovation. This is
the reason why this innovation service platform we discussed
today takes a particular importance today.
5. A second approach to support innovation is to improve the
innovation capacity of enterprises. There is no innovation
without entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, only few companies
know how to properly manage and successfully process
innovation. This applies especially to new businesses such as
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those in mobile technologies and services. Through the new
initiative "European Mobile and Mobility Service Platform" we
want to help promoting new and better forms of innovation
support, for all European businesses in this area. This can be
done by developing and testing new ideas such as the so-called
vouchers for innovation. We believe that this method is one of
the most effective and less bureaucratic forms to support
innovation and is currently applied in many countries in Europe
with great success. In this context, it is also very helpful instead
of directly supporting mobile service technologies to support
users to purchase such innovative mobile services. This helps
creating the necessary demand for mobile services applications,
and provides strong incentives for mobile service providers to
tailor services to customer needs.
6. A third approach to support innovation is to invest on creating a
favourable business environment. This is the concept of clusters,
which has been successfully applied in Greece by CORALLIA
in the area of microelectronics. The challenge now is to apply
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the concept of clusters also to service industries such as mobile
sservices. In this case, the involvement of users would be
crucial. The bad news is that there is not much 'best practice'
available for how to better involve users into the innovation
processes. The term "user-driven" innovation shows that users
know exactly what they need and would like to have and
therefore they become the real drivers of innovation. Which new
mobile technologies could be developed in the next few years?
for which customers? Which users are willing to pay a "trial and
error" service? The involvement of user groups can help to
manage risks better, by inviting users participating in the
development and testing phase of new services. This is the
approach followed by the Living Labs initiative co-funded by
the Commission. The challenge therefore at policy level is how
to involve user groups into clusters. To this end, and in the area
of clusters, the European Cluster Alliance, a European open
platform of policy makers, will collect any available case studies
and draft a guide on how to bring closer clusters and user
communities.
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7. Mobile services constitute a promising new field, which is I
think can be well supported by the Greek culture which is good
at improvising and flexibility. Most of the technologies for
mobile services are there, but their best possible use,
combination and commercial exploitation is still the prize to win.
8. I can only encourage you to take advantage of our new
"European Mobile and Mobility Industries Initiative." that we
intend to launch early next year.
I wish you a fruitful event.
Thanks.
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