Innovating innovation.
Date: 2016-12-07
Institutions: European Political Strategy Centre
Subjects: entrepreneurship, innovation, patent, research and development, research budget, serial publication

EPSC NEWSLETTER

Issue 3 I November 2016

Innovating Innovation

Innovation is the driving force for addressing our most 
pressing societal, economic and environmental concerns 
and building our long-term strength and resilience. It 
is about expanding opportunities, better responding to 
change and shaping the future we want to live and work in.

At the same time, innovation is in many ways a euphemism 
because it suggests a successful outcome. The reality is of 
course that most attempts to innovate end up in failure. 
But the process of that failure is important because it is a 
learning journey. It’s not without reason that many successful 
entrepreneurs follow the mantra ‘fail often, fail fast’. Failure 
is an integral part of success and therefore of innovation.

Innovation itself is changing in profound ways. Often 
seen as a linear process in which a clever combination 
of scientists, R&D spending and patents inevitably lead 
to success, we are now witnessing many other drivers 
of innovation. Be it design, business model, workplace, 
process or social innovation, underpinning the ‘innovation of 
innovation’ is digitalisation in general and data in particular.

‘The real work — the hard 
work — of innovation will often 
be done by the people who swim 
against the tide and are prepared 
to challenge the status quo’

The European Commission is very fortunate to have a 
person in charge of innovation who takes an expansive view 
of these processes and therefore works with colleagues 

to mainstream innovation across policy portfolios. Carlos 
Moedas, the European Commissioner for Research, Science 
and Innovation, has put forward a number of promising 
initiatives which have the potential to provide a step 
change in Europe’s innovation performance. The soon-to-
be launched European Innovation Council will bring proven 
change-makers closer to the European project, while 
the Fund of Funds will see as much as 1.6 billion euro in 
additional venture capital investments channelled into the 
most promising scale-ups and innovation disrupters.

While Europe can be a catalyst, the real work — the 
hard work — of innovation will often be done by the 
people who swim against the tide and are prepared to 
challenge the status quo. That is why I am so grateful 
to the contributors of this newsletter for helping us 
better understand this new essence of innovation — or in 
the words of one of our authors, Christian Bason of the 
Danish Design Centre, ‘disruption is the new black’.

Along with my team, I hope you will enjoy this third 
edition of our EPSC Newsletter, which includes a 
genuine innovation on our part — a podcast with Robert 
Madelin, our former colleague and Senior Advisor to the 
European Commission on innovation.

Finally, remember to follow us on 
Twitter and Medium.

Ann Mettler,
Head, European Political Strategy Centre

Editor-in-chief: Ann Mettler  •  Executive Editor: Rachel Smit  •  Design and Layout: Annick Hilbert  •  Online Presence: Jonáš Jančařík

Disclaimer
The EPSC Newsletter highlights the work of the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), the European Commission’s in-house think tank, as well as that of the think-tank, policy and 
academic community. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily correspond to those of the European Commission. This newsletter was first sent to the EPSC 
distribution list. To enquire about subscription options, please email Ann Mettler (ann.mettler@ec.europa.eu)

1

Robert Madelin:  
‘Forget about Failure and Get  

on with Repeated Trying’

Robert Madelin, the European Commission’s Former Senior Advisor on Innovation, tells us 
how Europe can get better at innovating.

Europe urgently needs to shift more resources towards innovation. Innovation is not just 
about new technologies; it’s about changing the human beings that we are. The children we 
invest in today are the innovators of the future. They need to learn that it doesn’t matter 
how many times they fall over so long as they stand up at the end. This will fundamentally 
change the way they look at life and at work. It will free them up to build healthier societies. 

Below are some excerpts from our conversation – edited 
and condensed for this Newsletter. To enjoy the full 
interview, listen to the podcast.

This is one of the things I touch on in my report 
‘Opportunity Now: Europe’s Mission to Innovate’. 

EPSC: How do you define innovation? Why does 
it matter for Europe?

RM: If innovation is ‘anything that society adopts that 
changes it’ and public policymaking is ‘improving the 
state of the world’, then, almost by definition, if you are 
a policymaker in a democracy, you are trying to create 
innovation. 

We are currently on the crest of a wave of extremely 
disruptive change. Everything is changing. Our 
understanding of everything is changing. Yet we’re not 
really engaged in a way that enables European society 
to take ownership of those changes and to feel… not 
in control, but resilient and capable at a time of great 
uncertainty. This leads to phobia and rejection. And so, I 
would link the challenge of technological innovation with 
the challenge of social renovation, of post-truth politics 
and social disaffection.

EPSC: Social innovation circles talk about the 
value of experimentation. But how can we 
experiment if there is a fear of failure? 

RM: The first thing is to put aside the notion of 
‘succeeding’ and ‘failing’. If a young child is trying 
to walk, it falls over, gets up and goes on. It doesn’t 
think ‘oh I failed’. But it knows that it wants to remain 
standing. Repeated effort until we get there – same if 
you’re trying to learn to play a musical instrument or 
grow something in your garden. The beginning of an 
appropriate culture for a world of change is to realise 
that things don’t always work. It’s about being 
more modest and more tenacious. That comes from 
very early education – from conception to kindergarten. 

In Europe we have some world-class – world-beating – 
early education models, but we don’t copy and share them 
enough. One of Europe’s specificities is that we are a multiple 
experiment. We have 200+ regions, we have two dozen 
countries and yet, we don’t like to learn from each other. 
Finnish early-years education is being copied in Shenzhen, 
Singapore and Tanzania, but not in the other Member States. 
Tribalism trumps experiment, which is a tragedy.

‘Society has to be 
a living lab’

EPSC: Is it an oxymoron to say ‘we can plan  
for innovation’?

RM: Of course we can. We’ve just talked about what 
mind-set makes innovation work. You can also design 
your society to be a place for innovation. People say a 
laboratory is a safe space to do dangerous things. 
Society has to be a living lab. We’ve had a living lab 
movement in Europe for over a decade. We now have 
the maker movement; we have ‘fab-labs’. You can very 
intentionally – as a government – design, with other 
actors in society, the way to be innovative.

EPSC: What are the three top priorities for Europe?
RM: The European Commission, the heads of State 
and Government have to – by design – put more time 
and resources into making innovation happen. The 
established structures are fit for purpose but the 
allocation of resource, effort and attention is not 
yet sufficiently on innovation. That would be a 
first act of leadership.

2

The second would be to go all the way down to 
the early years and all the way up to what I call 
‘entrepreneurial universities’ and discuss together, with 
the local areas where mandates for education exist, how 
to improve the skills and the capacity of European 
residents and citizens. 

And the third, which is already germing in the latest 
announcements on doubling the Juncker Package, is 
to better connect innovative financing with ideas for 
innovation that emerge from research programmes and 
challenge programmes. At the moment, there is a sense 
that the end of the pipe is not sufficiently connected to 
the beginning of market-focused investment support. 

EPSC: So money matters. But just to kick-start?
RM: Money matters but other aspects are much more 
important. One of the mistakes we often make in Europe 
is to only talk about money and the budget. That’s a 
difference in the Juncker package, which is a recent 
innovation. Money matters, top-end research matters, 
and these two things we do reasonably well. There are 
other things like skills and education where we can do a 
lot better. If we act today, we can affect the people who 
will be in labs and start-ups in twenty years. 

EPSC: What would you say an innovator of the 
future looks like?

RM: That’s a great question. But I’ve spent almost forty 
years being a bureaucrat so whether I know the answer 
is another question. 

The first thing to say about the innovator of the future 
is they will be living a 100 year life. 

Children born this year in Europe have a 50/50 chance 
of seeing 110. Therefore the innovator of the future will 
be looking at a life-course that is entirely different to 
ours. That will change the way people react to ideas of 
‘getting a career’ or society in general.

Robert Madelin ‘Innovation Flavours’

Creativity 
& 
Design-Driven

Workplace & 
Employee 
Innovation

Public Sector 
Innovation

Social 
Innovation

Data-Driven 
Innovation

Technological 
R&D

Disruptive
Innovation

Organisational 
Business Model 
Innovation

Open 
Innovation 2.0

Frugal
Innovation

Responsible 
Innovation

Digital
Innovation

Regulatory
Innovation

Marketing 
Driven 
Innovation

Knowledge 
Base 
(non R&D) 
Innovation

?

Source: European Commission

I’m an optimist. The hundred-year life not only is a 
great gift; it frees up society to be a healthier society. 
The innovator of the future will be somebody with a 
much more balanced view of the world; somebody who 
understands the world in a more holistic way – not just 
‘earn money, pay taxes and somebody else does the 
social good’. It will be more integrated and, as a result, 
the way in which society takes up innovation and the 
sorts of innovation we create may well become richer, 
more varied. These will be people who think with both 
sides of their brain, who use their hands, who are 
creative, who had that good early-years education, who 
don’t mind how many times they fall over as long as they 
stand up at the end. Above all, we have to acknowledge 
that the change is not just new technologies but also the 
very human beings that we are.

‘The sources and sauces  
of innovation have never  

been more varied’

Robert Madelin, EPSC Strategic Note, Opportunity Now: 
Europe’s Mission to Innovate, Issue 15, 5 July 2016.

3

Testing a New Approach To Innovation in the EU

Let’s Experiment:  

Christian Bason, CEO, Danish Design Centre pleads for a Europe of more political courage, 
willing to take a more radical ‘trial and error’ approach to innovation and growth. 

We need to use our regions and countries as living labs to test out new innovation processes. 
That does not mean bigger budgets; it means being smarter about the way we use EU funds. 

Disruption is the new black. Markets and 
technologies are increasingly unpredictable and 
complex. Companies have no guarantees that their 
business models are going to be viable in the future. 
Change is a more or less permanent requirement — and 
one that can be difficult to digest for employees. 

and growth. We are also looking to reach out to public 
organisations to identify how service design can pave 
the way towards a more user-centred governance. 
Similarly, selected countries or regions of the EU 
could be treated as growth labs; as prototypes for the 
development and implementation of business policies.

For a CEO, navigating in these conditions is no easy task. 
Decision-makers at European level and in Member States 
need to acknowledge these changes and translate them 
into new political measures and instruments.

‘Let us work together in Europe 
to turn our most challenged 
Member States and regions  
into the world’s leading  

growth labs’

We need to foster the generation and faster 
spread of new knowledge. Without this knowledge 
— whether it’s about new technologies, potential new 
business partners or new management methods — 
companies struggle to address opportunities, disruptions 
and constraints in their environment. 

We need public investment in new technologies 
and methods. As the lead risk-taker and most long-
term investor in modern society, the State needs to 
have the political courage to actively support key 
technologies and approaches that will fuel business 
innovation in the long term. 

We need to try out new experimental, practice-
based learning. In complex situations, only the 
systematic testing of possible actions can tell decision-
makers which solutions will work. At the Danish Design 
Centre, we strive to put these notions into practice. Our 
PLUS programme1 pairs together innovative businesses 
with design agencies to explore how to generate faster 
and more profitable innovation, business development 

1.  The programmme is run in cooperation with the Confederation of 

Danish Industry, the Technical University of Denmark and the trade 
organisation Design Denmark.

‘Disruption is 
the new black’ 

We need to gain insights and scale up. The new 
insights we can gain about how to initiate innovation 
processes and how these unfold in relation to different 
markets and technologies must benefit all relevant 
stakeholders to trigger new behaviours. This requires 
a collaborative approach to dissemination of new 
knowledge, involving government departments, agencies, 
regions, municipalities, private foundations, etc.

Danish Design Centre’s ‘Scale by Design’ 
approach

Source: Danish Design Centre

4

EU programmes such as Horizon 2020 present 
powerful resources for conducting such action-oriented, 
longitudinal research at micro-level. And it goes without 
saying that the institutional and geographical reach of 
the EU can be a huge asset in any endeavour to ensure 
the rapid scaling and spread of new knowledge. 

Sometimes, the only way to improve things is to 
really – really – try something new. 

Let us work together in Europe to turn our most 
challenged Member States and regions into the world’s 
leading growth labs.

‘Innovation presupposes an element of 
novelty and experimentation’

EPSC Strategic Note, Towards an Innovation Principle Endorsed 
by Better Regulation, Issue 14, 30 June 2016.

Data Analytics: 
Helping Democracy At Work

Emanuele Baldacci, Director at Eurostat explains how data analytics will change the face of 
public policymaking, creating scope for real-time decision-making, preventive interventions and 
a better forecasting of the long-term implications of policies, while at the same time fostering 
more opportunities for active citizen engagement. 

Reaping the benefits of the new data ecosystem will require strong overarching rules expanding 
access to data for public purposes at a time when smart data are becoming a key economic 
asset for private companies.

Data is everywhere. The spread of the internet and 
social media, growing interactions between humans and 
machines, as well as between machines themselves, 
as smart devices using sensors and software become 
more common, mean data is being generated at an 
unprecedented scale and speed.

As data become increasingly abundant and cheap 
to produce, their value is not in their size, but in the 
information and knowledge that can be extracted  
from them.

A game changer for policymakers
For decision-makers, this new source of information 
presents a particularly wealthy and timely source 
of data for supporting evidence-based policymaking 
at a time when stakeholders are demanding 
more transparency and accountability from their 
governments. 

Data-based signals are now more detailed and more 
timely, creating the scope for real-time policymaking 
and a shortening of the policy cycle. The quality 
of information generated by applying solid statistical 
algorithms to ever larger data-sets also dramatically 
increases the reliability of the information base for 

5

public decision-making. At the same time, longitudinal 
studies of individuals or companies over time can help 
to better predict and assess the long-term implications 
of policies, simulating the impact of different scenarios 
and creating scope for preventive interventions 
and more effective policy outcomes. The use of 
data profiles and geographical referencing increases 
the granularity of information and the possibility of 
exploring different behaviours. This is useful to fine-
tune policy interventions to specific groups or 
territories to a much better effect than with traditional 
data. Finally, bringing information closer to citizens 
helps improve the accountability and transparency 
of government policies. It also provides 
opportunities for more active citizen engagement 
and empowerment. 

A Global Explosion of Data
Worldwide data storage in exabytes

Machines to replace statisticians? 
Nowadays, computerised systems are able to extract 
results from very large datasets and generate 
automatic reports to facilitate decisions, without human 
intervention. At a recent international gathering of 
statisticians, a special session was dedicated to the idea 
of an ‘automatic statistician’. Nonetheless, machines will 
continue to rely on skilled analysts for the development 
of statistical algorithms.

Unleashing the power of information 
Reaping the benefits of analytics services for government 
policies will require strong overarching rules in three 
main areas. Firstly, regulations that expand access to 
data for public purposes will be needed. This is difficult 
as smart data are increasingly owned by private sector 
companies, for which they are a key asset. Secondly, 
data privacy should be ensured to safeguard individual 
rights and increase trustworthiness of information. 
While big data systems are, in principle, exposed to the 
risk of privacy violations, smart algorithms can ensure 
that individual information is used only to produce 
anonymised aggregated information for decision-
making. Thirdly, the algorithms themselves – as the 
key to generating value in the information production 
process – should be subject to transparency and ethical 
rules, disclosed and replicable to ensure peer review. 
Governments should support the adoption of ethics 
codes by the algorithms development community.

Source: International Data Corporation Digital University Study

‘By definition, innovation cannot be preordained.  
A toolbox of innovation-enabling legislation is  
key to unleash the innovative potential of society, 
companies and individuals’

EPSC Strategic Note, Towards an Innovation Principle Endorsed by Better Regulation,  
Issue 14, 30 June 2016.

6

EU Must Avert Data-Driven  

Innovation Risks To Society

Christian Reimsbach-Kounatze, Internet economist and policy analyst at the OECD, says 
data-driven innovation risks undermining the social fabric on which our democratic market 
societies are based if action isn’t taken to empower individuals and enterprises.

Data-driven innovation leads to shifts in power: away from individuals, traditional businesses 
and governments, and towards data-driven organisations. Against this backdrop, to ensure 
sustainable and inclusive growth in the 21st century, Europe urgently needs to accelerate 
digital skills development and tackle nascent transparency, market concentration and 
taxation issues inherent to the growth of the data economy.

Data-driven innovation may yet be in its infancy, but it 
is becoming a defining phenomenon of our era. Clinging 
to the status-quo is not an option. Policy and decision-
makers need to be pro-active, and understand the 
contours of this development and how it may evolve, in 
order to best leverage data as key infrastructure for green 
and inclusive growth in 21st century knowledge economies.

A new infrastructural resource 
Data is a new form of capital that cannot be 
depleted. As such, it has important beneficial spill-over 
effects – just as physical infrastructure. It can be used and 
re-used, for a theoretically unlimited range of purposes, 
to open up growth opportunities and generate benefits 
across society in ways that could not be foreseen when 
the data were created. This property provides a major 
theoretical link to total factor productivity growth.

In combination with data analytics, the use of data 
promises to improve products, processes, organisational 
methods and markets for businesses and governments. 
‘Data is a new form  
of capital that cannot  

be depleted’

Data-driven innovation is no longer limited to high-tech 
firms but permeates all sectors of the economy, 
including traditional sectors such as manufacturing 
and agriculture. Overall, it is estimated that firms using 
data and analytics have raised productivity faster than 
non-users by around 5-10%.

Creative destruction
Inherently disruptive, data-driven innovation may 
induce the ‘creative destruction’ of established 
businesses and markets. Labour markets will 
be affected as data-driven innovation enables the 
automation of an increasing number of tasks. This 
includes intellectually demanding tasks, such as the 
analysis of medical images and legal documents. 
More middle-income jobs may thus be negatively 
affected – jobs largely held by the segment of the 
population that ‘glues’ our societies together. At the 
same time, new types of jobs may emerge, like data 
specialist jobs that allow firms to innovate.

Risk of Automatibility of Jobs
Percentage of people at risk

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Medium risk

High risk

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Note: Medium risk of automation affects 5% to 70% of tasks. High risk 
of automation affects over 70% of tasks. 
Source: Arntz,M., T. Gregory and U. Zierahn, The Risk of Automation for 
Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis, 2016, OECD.

7

 
 
 
ICT Specialists in Europe, 2015
as % of total employment, men & woman

Men

Women

Finland
Sweden
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Estonia
Belgium
Ireland
Austria
Denmark
Czech Republic
Germany
Slovenia
France
Hungary
Malta
EU-28
Slovakia
Croatia
Poland
Italy
Spain
Bulgaria
Portugal
Cyprus
Latvia
Lithuania
Romania
Greece

Switzerland
Norway
Iceland
Turkey

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Source: European Commission

However, OECD estimates show that data specialists in 
2013 accounted for under 1% of total employment in 
the large majority of countries and many countries are 
still struggling to develop these specialist skills. 27% 
of adults in OECD countries still have no experience in 
using computers or lack the most elementary ICT skills, 
while only 6% of people in the OECD have the ‘highest 
level’ of ICT skills. 

If emerging issues remain unaddressed, data-
driven innovation may undermine the social fabric 
on which democratic market societies are based, 
as it may favour greater information asymmetry, 
leading to shifts in power: away from individuals 
(consumers and workers) to data-driven organisations; 
away from traditional businesses to data-driven 
businesses (as a result of market concentration and 
tax avoidance strategies, leading to base erosion and 
profit shifting); and away from governments to data-
aggregating organisations, which can gain much more 
knowledge about citizens (and politicians).

‘Automation is by no means a 
synonym for work extinction. 
Indeed, substitution may mean 
the destruction of certain 
jobs, but not the destruction 
of employment’

EPSC Strategic Note, The Future of Work,  
Issue 13, 10 June 2016.

Empowering individuals and small and medium 
enterprises, which lag in productivity relative to larger 
firms, therefore seems to be critical for leveraging 
data-driven innovation for inclusive growth. This can be 
achieved by: (i) promoting continuous skills development, 
while addressing the risks of worsening inequality in 
earnings; (ii) promoting transparency and the rights to 
the re-use of data across interoperable applications (data 
portability); (iii) better assessing market concentration 
and competition barriers, for instance, through the 
consideration of potential consumer detriments due to 
privacy violations; and (iv) preventing base erosion and 
profit shifting by firms seeking to reduce taxable income 
artificially or shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions.

‘Europe must urgently  
raise its digital game’

EPSC Strategic Note, Connected Continent for a Future-Proof 
Europe, Issue 19, 25 July 2016.

8

Game Changers for Inclusive Innovation

Carlos Moedas, European 
Commissioner for Research, 
Science and Innovation tells us 
why open innovation matters in 
the new digital-physical world.

‘In the digital-physical 
world in which we live, 
we increasingly need 
open innovation’

The digital revolution has democratised innovation.

On the one hand, users are much closer to producers 
and influence the way a product develops; they try out, 
evaluate and give feed-back. Also, the digital economy 
allows new  –  and smaller  –   players to enter the market 
and scale-up. In addition, the digital economy has 
created new markets, or new economic prospects. Think 
about bridging the gap between idle resources and 
potential users or customers. Uber or Airbnb are classic 
examples.

In the digital-physical world in which we live, we 
increasingly need open innovation, that is, involving 
more actors in the innovative process –  scientists, 
entrepreneurs, users, governments and civil society.

I see three major challenges ahead for Europe in  
this regard:
•  the lack of disruptive market-creating innovation;
•  the scarcity of venture capital, and the difficulty of 
scaling-up start-ups to global competitiveness;
•  and a risk culture that accepts that failure is an 

inherent component of entrepreneurship.

This think piece was originally written for the publication ‘Shaping the Future: Thoughts on the Future of Society 
and Governance’ issued at the occasion of the 2016 Annual Conference of the European Strategy and Policy 
Analysis System (ESPAS), which took place on 16–17 November in Brussels. The publication contains a rich 
collection of over 30 forward-looking, anticipatory essays on the critical trends that are defining the future 
of our societies and governance systems, in particular as we enter the Digital Age. You can also access these 
articles on Medium.

9

Innovating in Public Service  

Provision Across Europe

Ruby Gropas, Leader of the European Political Strategy Centre’s Social Team, takes us 
through the latest progress on digital innovation in Europe.

Although Europe is making steady progress towards becoming a digital economy and society, 
progress has been slowing down, in particular as regards digital public service developments 
and human capital, according to the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) – a composite 
index that summarises Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU member 
states in digital competitiveness. Austria, Germany, Estonia, Malta, the Netherlands and 
Portugal are those Member States making the most progress, while Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech 
Republic, Greece, France, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia are falling behind.

While there has been major progress in terms of taking 
up digital tools in public service provision, there is still 
a big variation in eGovernment performance across 
Europe, and there is still great untapped potential 
for use of eGovernment services. In 2015, interactive 
eGovernment services were still used by only 26 % of 
the EU-28 population.

This is the result of both a fall in the percentage of the 
digitally excluded (from 23 % to 16 % of the total) and a 
fall in popularity of offline channels among internet users.

‘There is still great 
untapped potential for use 
of eGovernment services’

‘Still only 1 in 3 
public websites is 
mobile-friendly’

Yet, of people needing to submit forms to the public 
administrations, one in two chose the online channel in 
2015, which is 10 percentage points more than in 2011. 

Other than broadening the services available and 
increasing the quality of their online offering, 
eGovernment strategies must become more user-
centric. This means integrating customisation and 
mobility. Digital services must meet the needs of 
digitally demanding consumers who have access to the 
internet, in their pocket, on the move, 24/7. 

Europe’s digital performance: The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI)
Integration of Digital Technology

Digital Public Services

Use of Internet

Human Capital

Connectivity

80

70

60

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40

30

20

10

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y
C

a
i
t
a
o
r
C

y
l
a
t
I

e
c
e
e
r
G

a
i
r
a
g
u
B

l

i

a
n
a
m
o
R

Source: European Commission, Digital Progress Report, June 2016, https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/desi 

2. 

http://wearesocial.com/uk/special-reports/digital-in-2016 

10

 
 
 
 
Globally, mobile social media users leapt by 17% in 
2015, adding 283 million new users to reach 1.97 
billion mobile social media users worldwide, equating 
to 27% global penetration.2 

Yet, still only 1 in 3 public websites is ‘mobile-friendly’.

Against this backdrop, public authorities are starting to 
invest in developing social media apps to facilitate 
service provision. One recent, visible example of 
innovation in this area emerged in the context of 
the ongoing migrant and refugee crisis. The German 
Federal Office for Migration and Refugees developed, in 
cooperation with the Federal Employment Agency and 
the Goethe-Institut, the Ankommen app, which provides 
basic integration services, such as an introduction to the 
German language, information on asylum procedures 
and studying, as well as on cultural practices and values 
in Germany. In the same vein, the Norwegian Agency for 
Development Cooperation recently launched EduApp4Syria, 
a competition ‘to develop an open source smartphone 
application that can help Syrian children learn how to read 
in Arabic and improve their psychosocial wellbeing’.

e-Government performance across Europe: 
Combines progress compared to EU 28+ average

Malta

Cyprus

Sweden

Finland

Estonia

Latvia

Lithuania

Poland

Czech 
Republic

Slovakia
Hungary

Austria
Slovenia

Croatia

Romania

Bulgaria

Greece

Malta

Cyprus

61% І Absolute score EU28+
  +8   І Average growth EU28+

Ireland

UK

Denmark

Netherlands
Germany
Belgium

France

al
g
ortu

P

Spain

Italy

Accelerators:
growth & absolute score 
above EU28+

Steady performers:
absolute score above EU28+ 
& growth below EU28+

Moderate performers:
growth & absolute score 
below EU28+ average
No data available

Source: European Commission: eGovernment Benchmark report, October 
2016, https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/eu-egovernment-
report-2016-shows-online-public-services-improved-unevenly

‘If the industrial age was marked by standardisation,  

the digital era is about customisation’
Integration of Products and Services: Taking the Single Market into the 21st Century,  
Issue 7, 6 October 2015.

‘Promoting e-Government, e-Health and e-Procurement, 
particularly facilitating cross-border interoperability, 
can be effective in starting a virtuous circle in which 
public services are increasingly digital, and citizens find 
it increasingly natural to rely on them’

EPSC Strategic Note, Connected Continent for a Future-Proof Europe, Issue 19, 25 July 2016.

11

More Innovative Insights  

from The EPSC

Check out the broad range of innovation-centric 
analytical papers published on our website:
•  Shaping the Future: Thoughts on the Future of 
Society and Governance (ESPAS publication, 16 
November 2016)

•  Opportunity Now: Europe’s Mission to Innovate  

(Issue 15, 5 July 2016)

•  Towards an Innovation Principle Endorsed by Better 

Regulation (Issue 14, 30 June 2016)
•  Connected Continent for a Future-Proof 

Europe — Ensuring Affordable, Fast and Reliable 

Internet Access for a Thriving Digital Ecosystem 
(Issue 19, 25 July 2016)

•  The Future of Work — Skills and Resilience for a World 

of Change (Issue 13, 10 June 2016)

•  Towards Low-Emission Mobility — Driving the 
Modernisation of the EU Economy (Issue 17,  
20 July 2016)

•  Integration of Products and Services — Taking the 
Single Market into the 21st Century (Issue 7, 6 
October 2015)

Recent EPSC Events  
on Innovation 

Global Trends to 2030:  
Society and Governance 
What makes a prosperous society in the 21st century? 
What divides and unites societies in the Digital Age? 
What impact will new technologies have on issues of 
security and trust in general? How can connectivity 
contribute to inclusive and sustainable prosperity, and 
where can innovation make a difference? How can we 
better plan and decide in uncertain times?

These questions were at the heart of the 2016 Annual 
Conference of the European Strategy and Policy Analysis 
System (ESPAS), which was held on 16–17 November 
2016 as part of the inter-institutional collaboration 
between the European Commission, the European 
Parliament, the Council of the EU and the European 
External Action Service to monitor global trends and 
offer strategic foresight to the EU’s decision-makers.

To discover more about this inspiring two-day 
conference, please take a look at some of the videos 
from our speakers, as well as the conference’s 
accompanying publication ‘Shaping the Future: Thoughts 
on the Future of Society and Governance’.

Europe as a Pro-Innovation Environment
A uniquely interactive workshop gathering a select group 
of senior stakeholders from multiple horizons was hosted 
by the EPSC as part of the preparation of Robert Madelin’s 
report ‘Opportunity Now: Europe’s Mission to Innovate’. 
During the workshop, participants prioritised and identified 
possible areas for action to turn the EU into a more pro-

innovation environment. What is needed for an innovation 
embracing systems-thinking? How to better understand 
the complexity of innovation? How to significantly up-skill 
people, as one of Europe’s most important assets? Place-
based innovation, innovation in support of the Sustainable 
Development Goals and smart specialisation strategies 
were also emphasised as core strategies.

Big Data for Public Policy: Lessons from 
the Best 
The government of New Zealand has long been a 
front-runner with regard to integrating data in policy 
development. It is now embarking on an ambitious and 
far-reaching effort to place virtually all government 
data in the public domain to deliver more targeted and 
tailor-made policy interventions and public services. This 
is spearheaded by Liz MacPherson, Chief Statistician of 
New Zealand, and Sir Peter Gluckman, Chief Scientific 
Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand. The 
EPSC invited both to a discussion with Alexander De 
Croo, Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium and Minister 
of Development Cooperation, Digital Agenda, Telecom 
and Postal Services and Robert Madelin, former Senior 
Adviser to the European Commission on Innovation, to 
address how privacy and data security concerns are 
dealt with in their work.

Transformative Social Innovation 
The EPSC hosted Ric Young, a Canadian expert on social 
innovation to a discussion with members of the ESPAS 
Young Talent Network on: ‘Transformational Innovation: 
Moving from problem serving to problem solving’.

PDF: ISSN 2467-4249  •  Catalogue number: ES-AC-16-003-EN-N  •  Site/HTML: ISSN 2467-4249  •  Catalogue number: ES-AC-16-003-EN-Q

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