On 12 March, ECIU presented a innovation position paper ‘From Valorisation to Impact’ in Brussels, on how to improve the impact of the knowledge valorisation from universities.

Universities play a key role as sources and transmitters of knowledge that creates societal impact. The partners involved in the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU) are characterised by a strong commitment to supporting local innovation ecosystems and transfer of knowledge for economic and social benefit. Many have been pioneers in establishing entrepreneurship as part of the higher education curriculum.

ECIU recognises the importance of making Europe more competitive as laid out in Draghi’s European competitiveness report (September 2024) It is clear that more needs to be done to increase the commercialisation of research results in Europe. ECIU looks forward to the European Commission‘s upcoming strategy for startups and scaleups, the, European Innovation Act‘, the ‘New State Aid Framework’ and the Revision of directives on Public Procurement.

In the paper, arguments and concrete examples are given to strengthen universities as agents for Europe’s competitiveness. To summarise, ECIU proposes for support for:

1. Resourcing of entrepreneurship activities at universities and recognition of the important role that Technology Transfer Officers play in linking academia with industry.
2. Ensuring availability of financial resources to provide a pathway for research results to be commercialised and preparing the ground for private investors.
3. Clarifying State Aid rules for any technology emerging from university R&I.
   ‍

The header image was created with the help of AI.