For the last decade, the EU has been putting in place a rich and diverse array of innovation policies. Almost every month there is a new program to encourage industry clusters, technology transfers, collaborative research projects, entrepreneurship, venture funding, and the like. If these kinds of policies were all it took to successfully promote innovation, the EU would be the world’s innovation leader. But true success requires a culture and regulatory environment that embraces the disruptive innovation which leads to new technologies and business models that displace or reorder existing markets and industries. Unfortunately, Europe is decidedly ambiguous if not outright hostile toward disruptive innovation, writes Rob Atkinson in Europe’s World.
