The European Network of Innovative Higher Education Institutions presents a report with recommendations on how to implement the New European Innovation Agenda.
On the 1st of December 2022, the European Network of Innovative Higher Education Institutions (ENIHEI) published a report on innovation in European Higher Education, including ten recommendations and one note. The report is targeted to the European Commission (EC) demonstrating how to support Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in the implementation of the European Strategy for Universities and the New European Innovation Agenda (NEIA). Furthermore, it addresses the EU Member States, showcasing how they can enable HEI to increase multinational cooperation in innovation.
On the 2nd of December 2022, the Competitiveness Council (COMPET) adopted the Council Conclusions on the NEIA. The Council supports the EC’s proposal from July 2022 but extends the focus from deep-tech start-ups to a broader range of innovation processes and stakeholders. Furthermore, the Council emphasises the EIC Forum’s role in resolving issues around stock option remuneration and endorses that no new instruments should be created to implement the agenda, but existing instruments should be used. Even though there is no further budget foreseen for the agenda’s implementation, Vladimír Balaš, Czech Minister for Education, Youth and Sport, emphasised after the adoption that strengthening the EU’s own capacity in strategic areas “will not be possible without ambitious investments in innovation”. In this light, the commitment of umbrella organisations from Higher Education Institutions to contribute to the agenda (statement European University Alliances, Guide UAS4EUROPE), but also from networks like ENIHEI, becomes increasingly important.
The ENIHEI comprises 37 HEI (1-2 members from each EU country) who exchange knowledge, ideas and experiences on how higher education can promote an innovation culture and enable creativity, entrepreneurship, and talent. 28 of its members were appointed by the EU Member States and nine were nominated by the European Commission. The members span the breadth of European higher education both geographically and in terms of types of actors, including universities of the arts and universities of applied sciences, in addition to leading research-intensive universities. ENIHEI’s main goals are to support the European higher education system, to contribute to making Europe a global leader in the next wave of innovation, to develop ideas and offer recommendations on how to advance the innovation-relevant actions of the EU, such as the European strategy for universities or the NEIA, and to produce recommendations, which will serve as a foundation for further work by the European Commission, EU Member States and other parties. The last of the objectives led to the report at hand.
Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, who announced the network at the first European Education and Innovation Summit in June 2022 (see SwissCore article), expected that “the Network should come together to share ideas and learn from each other, mobilising the higher education sector and being the tip of the spear as we implement the European strategy for universities and the New European Innovation Agenda”. However, the creation of the network initially stirred some controversy as not all Member States were willing to nominate only one innovative university from their country, and also because the established representatives of the European higher education sector, such as, for example EUA, UAS4EUROPE, or ESU, were not included in the process.
The report is based on the contributions of ENIHEI’s members and structured in 10 recommendations and one final note. The first recommendation is related to the role of HEI in stimulating entrepreneurial activities and innovation deployment through incubators and spinouts. The following three suggestions derive from the value that HEI bring as engines of innovation and orchestrators of their regional innovation ecosystems. Further, five recommendations concern deep-talent development, as HEI are anchors of knowledge and skills development with a pivotal role in driving innovation. The last recommendation proposes to improve monitoring tools for better policymaking. The report ends with a note about the need for interdisciplinarity, emphasising the importance of the social sciences, arts, and humanities in understanding and addressing complex societal challenges, which should be considered transversal to all previous recommendations.
More concretely, ENIHEI recommends that the European Commission and the EU Member States should support and finance higher education spin-out companies, promote the creation of university living labs, reinforce the role of HEI in regional deep-tech innovation valleys, and support the connection of innovation ecosystems around leading HEI. Furthermore, it suggests to train researchers to become innovation actors, develop entrepreneurial talent in students, foster women leadership in deep-tech innovation, re-imagine university education in general, and support teachers at all levels. Finally, ENIHEI recommends building monitoring tools to examine the role of European higher education institutions in innovation.
In 2023, the Commission will study the recommendations and decide on implementing a number of them. Many recommendations, however, are to some extent already addressed and implemented through Erasmus+ and the European Strategy for Universities.