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The European Union – An 'Innovation Union'

The 'Innovation Union' was put at the heart of the EU's 'Europe 2020' strategy with the aim of fostering Europe's capacity to innovate.  Innovation is recognised as essential to competitiveness but equally to tackling societal challenges.  Innovation is pursued through a wide-range of EU programmes and policies.  There is a growing network and considerable pool of innovation expertise throughout Europe across a whole range of sectors, which represents a potentially valuable resource for collaboration and partnership on innovation in humanitarian action and disaster risk management. 

Horizon 2020 - Research and innovation programme

Horizon 2020, the EU's eight multiannual framework programme, is the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union. Its focus is on excellent science, industrial leadership and the tackling of societal challenges, with the overall aim of securing Europe's global competitiveness. Through Horizon 2020, nearly €80 billion will be available in funding for research and innovation for the period 2014-2020. Humanitarian research and innovation needs are also addressed by Horizon 2020, such as through calls focused on advancing theoretical and practical knowledge on EU response mechanisms and their effectiveness or the development of civilian humanitarian mission personnel tracking (BES-10-2015).

To learn more, see: http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020 

European Innovation Partnerships

Within Europe, five 'European Innovation Partnerships' have been launched in the areas of active and healthy ageing; water; agriculture; and raw materials; and smart cities. these partnerships offer an interesting model of how a wide range of partners working on both supply and demand for innovation can collaborate on systemic impact and diffusion of innovation.

Social innovation

Social Innovation is supported by the EU across a range of sectors and in various programmes from support to networks of social innovation hubs. Regional and Social Funds, Youth Policy,  Support to SMEs, Digital Agenda for Europe and research programmes all have a part to play.

Take a tour of the virtual hub on Social Innovation Europe:  http://www.socialinnovationeurope.eu  

Read the 2014 report on 'Social Innovation – a decade of changes': http://ec.europa.eu/bepa/pdf/publications_pdf/social_innovation_decade_of_changes.pdf

Open Innovation

Open Innovation is an important component of the foreseen European Innovation System, where all stakeholders need to be involved and create seamless interaction and mash-up for ideas in innovation ecosystems.

Open Innovation 2.0 (OI2) is a new paradigm based on a Quadruple Helix Model where government, industry, academia and civil participants work together to co-create the future and drive structural changes far beyond the scope of what any one organization or person could do alone. This model encompasses also user-oriented innovation models to take full advantage of ideas' cross-fertilisation leading to experimentation and prototyping in real world setting.

For more information, see: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/open-innovation-20-yearbook-2014-giving-you-stimulus-and-ideas

Public Sector Innovation and Innovation Policy management

The European Commission has strongly supported a drive for improved provision and delivery of services in the Public Sector by joined-up focus on public sector innovation.  This has included mapping of innovations, pilot schemes on e-Government, e-Health and e-Participation and the introduction of a European Public Sector Innovation Scoreboard.  Again this work provides some interesting food for thought for Humanitarian Innovation.

Read more at: Powering European Public Sector Innovation: Towards a New Architecture - http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/powering-european-public-sector-innovation-pbKI0113825/