Tagged / ideas

Call for Ideas – Your view counts!

The European Commission has launched a Call for Ideas for a European Innovation Council to support Europe’s most promising innovators.question mark

Commissioner Moedas launched the Call for ideas at the Science|Business Annual Conference in Brussels. He said that “Europe has excellent science, but we lack disruptive market-creating innovation. This is what is needed to turn our best ideas into new jobs, businesses and opportunities.” While the number of start-ups created in Europe is on a par with competitors such as the United States, Europe lags behind in disruptive innovation and in scaling start-ups into world-beating businesses. A European Innovation Council could contribute to solving this problem.

To find out more and to participate in this survey, please go to the European Innovation Council website, where you can also view background documents and position papers.

The deadline for survey completion in 29 April 2016.

 

NERC call for ideas for highlight topics

nerc-logo-50thNERC is inviting the environmental science community to submit new ideas for strategic research. NERC is seeking ideas for research challenges that should be priorities for strategic research investment through highlight topics. NERC would welcome ideas from both researchers and those who use environmental science research.

Ideas for highlight topics should be submitted by 19 October 2015.

New guidance is available to explain what they are looking for, and how to submit ideas. The Strategic Programme Advisory Group (SPAG) will use these ideas to develop proposals for new highlight topics.

The aim of this process is to capture and build on ideas for excellent strategic science coming directly from the environmental science community. NERC first asked for ideas for strategic research last year, and 150 ideas were received by the cut-off date of 31 August 2014. NERC would like to thank all those who submitted ideas at that time. The ideas spanned all three of NERC’s strategic challenges (benefitting from natural resources, resilience to environmental hazards and managing environmental change) and covered a broad range of environmental science disciplines. Ideas were received from research and user communities, and from individuals and groups.

NERC Call for ideas for strategic programme areas

nerc-logo-50thNERC is inviting the environmental science community to submit new ideas for strategic research. NERC is seeking ideas for research challenges that should be priorities for strategic research investment through either highlight topics or strategic programme areas. NERC would welcome ideas from both researchers and those who use environmental science research.

Ideas for strategic programme areas should be submitted by 21 September 2015. Ideas for highlight topics should be submitted by 19 October 2015.

New guidance is available to explain what they are looking for, and how to submit ideas. The Strategic Programme Advisory Group (SPAG) will use these ideas to develop proposals for new highlight topics or strategic programme areas.

The aim of this process is to capture and build on ideas for excellent strategic science coming directly from the environmental science community. NERC first asked for ideas for strategic research last year, and 150 ideas were received by the cut-off date of 31 August 2014. NERC would like to thank all those who submitted ideas at that time. The ideas spanned all three of NERC’s strategic challenges (benefitting from natural resources, resilience to environmental hazards and managing environmental change) and covered a broad range of environmental science disciplines. Ideas were received from research and user communities, and from individuals and groups.

Is the UK good enough at commercialising innovation?

Innovate 2011v4A recent edition of the FT (Financial Times) examined a contentious topic: that the UK is not very good at commercialising the innovations that its universities and startups create. A comment from Hanadi Jabado, who directs a start-up accelerator at Cambridge university’s Judge Business School, sums up the issue under debate: “The UK leads the world in terms of research but if you look at the commercialisation of innovation, the UK lags behind. What we seem to be doing is to develop a concept and then sell it to international companies to optimise. We’re preparing the lunch, we’re cooking the lunch, but someone else is eating the lunch.”

Are we doing enough? Are traditional methods of evaluating the commercialisation of innovation no longer valid? And what more could be done? Read the article in full.