Sign the call for a Bretton Woods of Innovation

Science|Business will be presenting this declaration calling for greater international collaboration in innovation policy to world leaders and global institutions – indeed, calling for a Bretton Woods-style meeting on innovation. You are invited to review this declaration and to sign it on the following page.

Time for a Bretton Woods of innovation – A declaration

In 1944, the world’s economic leaders met at a resort in New Hampshire called Bretton Woods, and initiated a new economic order. Now, in the age of the knowledge economy, we believe that a new effort at global collaboration is needed.

We have many global challenges: economic turmoil, climate change, healthcare, education and inequalities of wealth, to name a few. Their solutions require innovation – new ideas, products and services. Innovation also creates new opportunities, for prosperity, long life and peace.

But fostering innovation is difficult. It includes giving a university researcher the funding, and academic freedom, to pursue a new idea. It’s enabling an entrepreneur to find the capital, partners and early adopters to experiment in the marketplace. It’s permitting large companies to move resources, of people and ideas, around the globe to maximize efficiency. For success, all of these require “a perfect storm” of good support and fortune; any break along the innovation chain, be it through a funding failure or a crippling regulation, will deny the world the fruits of our most talented minds.

This complex and delicate innovation process is simultaneously global and local: Innovation clusters like Cambridge, Silicon Valley or Bangalore have local roots but global impact. Yet government policies that affect innovation vary wildly across the globe, and often work to cross purposes. The economic stimulus packages around the globe include new support for research, education and healthcare – yet they all have different priorities. Regulations affecting small business formation, intellectual property and labour mobility differ by region, country and often even within a country. This is not bad in itself; these are matters of national sovereignty, locally determined.

But it is unfortunate that there is, at present, little public examination of these differences – and even less effort to encourage common approaches where appropriate. This situation misses an opportunity for growth and progress, across the globe.

As a result, we call for greater international dialogue on innovation policy. This could encompass:

• Sharing best practice. It is wasteful for every country to re-invent the wheel. Those nations and regions that have developed a good programme or policy should share their know-how with other nations. There should be a greater international effort to encourage the identification and dissemination of that know-how.
• Encouraging economic research. There is a small but growing body of economic and policy expertise in the field of innovation – but mostly of local or national origin today. How universities are best governed; how technology transfer offices best organized; how intellectual property best protected; how local innovation clusters best promoted – these are all vital policy questions that need rigorous economic and policy research, from a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary view. There should be a greater international effort to fund, publish and discuss independent, unbiased academic research in innovation policies and programmes.
• Collaborative programming for global challenges. Successful research requires talent, freedom and some luck, best permitted by a multiplicity of funding agencies and strategies across the globe. But research is also, increasingly, a global enterprise involving expertise from multiple nations. This is especially important when it comes to solving some of our global challenges of healthcare, energy and the environment, a regular comparison and review of related efforts would point up useful synergies on which governments can act. There should be a greater international effort to compare public funding methodologies and priorities for research, and where possible initiate more targeted, joint efforts that encourage cross-border fertilization of ideas, and collaboration among researchers.
• Enhanced mobility of research and ideas. Free movement of researchers and ideas, with the security of both protected, is vital to the global innovation system. There should be greater international review of unnecessary or anomalous barriers to mobility, that would benefit all.

These are a few of the areas for which more coherent global action is needed. In light of this, we call for an international meeting to discuss and support greater collaboration in innovation policy.

Sign the declaration here

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Leading Signatories

J. Frank Brown, Dean, INSEAD *

Jean-Philippe Courtois, President, Microsoft International *

Pat Cox, President, European Movement, and former President of the European Parliament  *

Denis Payre, Co-founder, Business Objects, and CEO, Kiala *

Philippe Pouletty, General Partner, Truffle Ventures, and Chairman, France Biotech *

Alfons Sauquet, Dean, ESADE Business School *

Helmut Schühsler, Managing Partner, TVM Capital *

Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson, President, Karolinska Institutet *

Doinita Ariton, Scientific Chancellor, Danubius University, Galati, Romania

Enric Banda, President, Euroscience

Philippe Busquin, Former European Commissioner for Research, Minister of State – Belgium

Rafal Dutkiewicz, Mayor of Wroclaw

Willy Claes, Minister of State-Belgium

Rivka Carmi, President, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Adelheid D. Ehmke, President, European Platform of Women Scientists

Malcolm Harbour MEP, Vice-President Science and Technology Options Assessment, European Parliament

Jan Hrusak, Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic

Astrid Lægreid, Pro-Rector, Research and Innovation, NTNU

Roberto Masiero, President IDC International, IDC

Dr. Elly Plooij- van Gorsel, Former vice-President European Parliament

Bruno van Pottelsberghe, Professor, ULB

Prof KM Spyer, Vice-Provost (Enterprise), University College London

K. M. Stokes, Dean, Tillman School of Business

Carl Johan Sundberg, Vice President/Head of Unit, Euroscience/Unit for Bioentrepreneurship, Karolinska Institutet

Boni Mehlomakulu, Deputy Director-General, Research, Development & Innovation from the Department of Science and Technology, South Africa

Reinhilde Veugelers, Prof, University of Leuven

Jimmy Weinblatt, Rector, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Georg Winckler, Rector, University of Vienna

* Member of the Science Business Innovation Board

Sign the declaration here

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