Well, good morning, everybody, and what a terrific introduction I really just like to you to echo Sunday's call for action at all,
and we work quite closely with Apple, Liu and AIU, and I certainly been incredibly impressed by some of the publications.
They're incredibly thoughtful Apple you put out, and there's a couple of them that I've actually got on my desktop that I keep referring to.
So really, please do do respond to her because it will make them even richer than they are.
So thank you. Well, we're changing tack now a little bit this morning, and we have a rather exciting topic I had to view,
which is our R&D targets a must for innovations that we've we've already touched on and we can't stop talking about metrics.
So we're moving from metrics to targets.
And we've got two fascinating speakers who are going to approach this topic, I think, from quite different angles.
And I think where they're going to leave us is in a good position for really rather interesting discussion.
So on the subject tomorrow, Andy Talk, it's a must for innovation. We have we have two speakers joining us from from the Netherlands.
I'm going to introduce them one by one.
They'll come up, give a presentation and then of course, we'll be back on the comfy chairs for a bit of a chat.
So our first speaker this morning is Professor Amamiya, who's chairman of the board and a top sector chemistry.
Now he's got a really deep background and we're really lucky to have him here in R&D strategy, innovation and management.
He has a degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in biochemistry, so he can't go wrong with that, can you?
She said piously. And his previous roles have included chief technology officer of DSM, senior vice president of research of development at Unilever.
He's a member of the Q Leave and Board of Governors, and he's chair of the R&D Executive Board.
He's chair of the Board of Utrecht University.
He's a councillor for the Dutch government on science and innovation, an honorary member of the Royal Dutch Chemical Society,
and was awarded the Academy Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.
And in 2015, he was appointed an officer of the Order of Iranians.
So we're really very lucky to have him here. Professor Meyer stages yours.
Thank you very much for this lengthy introduction, harmless fun.
And ladies and gentlemen, it's it's my pleasure to speak here in Oxford.
And this is not the first time I must say, and with a few slides, I would like to highlight the Dutch enterprise policy.
Not so much and best practise.
The policy I'm explaining is really fitting into the Dutch culture of collaboration between universities and industries at all levels.
Yeah. And in particular, I will highlight it's the innovation policy in the Netherlands.
And showing that that is the essence of my talk is that an R&D norm is not the only thing that counts when it comes to innovation output.
So maybe this is a bit provocative, but OK, I see it as input for a further discussion on this topic, you know?
So here you see a slide where the R&D expenses as a percentage of GDP probably are familiar with the numbers here.
But when you see the Netherlands shop there,
you see that we spend a meagre two percent of GDP and that is just the average of the European Union expenditures.
It's well below the Barcelona ambition of three percent and far behind the investments in competing in countries like Germany,
Belgium, and they are much higher. So Germany is at more than three percent.
And Belgium is even exceeding the three percent investment.
And so the two percent is so, so the figure of the two percent with a private share of about 60 percent.
So 40 percent is public funding. And this figure is partly explained by economic structure in the Netherlands,
with dominating sectors like agrifood with a very low R&D intensity 0.7 and letting large pharmaceutical companies with a high R&D intensity.
So there is now consensus in the Netherlands that 2.5 percent of GDP would be the right ambition,
forces the Barcelona ambition, and this number is now officially adopted by the Dutch government.
And however, the forecasted public R&D investment in the Netherlands are slightly decreasing instead of moving upwards.
And. So and although this issue was sorry, I don't.
Although the issue was addressed extensively in many reports, it didn't make it to the political agenda.
And there is a general belief amongst politicians that the issue is not that urgent.
So the scientific community is still performing very well.
Output scores in the top five worldwide and one may argue that we are still benefiting from the higher investments in the past.
But this is already continuing this issue for about 20 25 years so that the scientific community is still performing very well.
It's a bit surprising, and after more than two decades of relatively low R&D investments,
the Netherlands is still in a favourable position with pretty good rankings, as shown here.
I'm not really a supporter of rankings, but OK, it gives you an impression where we are in the Netherlands,
for example, in the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum and the European Innovation Scoreboard.
There you see a rather stable position of the Netherlands over the years,
and what not really helps in the political discussion is that in the more year planning of our government,
the R&D investments are still booked as expenses without a return.
Whilst there is sufficient empirical evidence now that this is not correct,
an explanation for the continuing good rankings is that the R&D norm is not that important for your innovation output.
Equally important might be the effectiveness of your R&D system in a country.
And here comes the Dutch innovation policy into play and the industry policy in an influence evolved over time from abroad active policy.
You've seen it in many countries just after the Second World War, followed by a period of backing the losers.
That was a disastrous period. I must say a later on generic technology policies.
Finally, a policy of backing the winners, and that's where we are now. And in 2000 10, I think it was, you know, 2010.
The Dutch government announced its top sector policy as part of a revised enterprise policy with a generic threat
society up apart of mainly tax incentives and then specific track focussing on the so-called top sectors.
And I've come back to that, and it was a small third track of seed capital for new start-ups.
But this was not really substantial. That point of time, you see the targets set in 2011, and these targets should be and should be met in 2017.
And I will show you where we are, where we were in 2017. That is the latest affirmative action I can present here in 2000 at and Dutch government
launches top sector policy as part of a completely revised enterprise policy,
and it's its true system transition for the innovation landscape.
I must say, aiming at boosting pretty competitive private public partnerships free competitive up to technology readiness level of about six.
So one, two six. And that is included in this public private, private public partnership,
and it was meant to bridge the so-called innovation gap if it was existing at all.
I don't know. The reasoning behind this change is that the previous innovation policies were too fragmented,
with many different and loosely connected broken matic initiatives creating disproportional production, transactional and friction cost.
And it was seen as far from effective this system and.
In the next slide. Oh, yeah, that's important.
Let me first. Yeah. You see here the nine top sectors.
So it's high tech systems, life sciences hands.
When it's on, I'm in a chair of the top sector chemistry. You can talk a lot about this top sector, but it takes too much time.
Maybe we find time somewhere during the breaks to highlight it further.
If somebody is interested,
these top sectors were selected because we feel that they have a particular international advantage and an opportunity for accelerated growth.
So that was them were the main selection criteria. So it's about our future earning potential in the Netherlands,
going hand-in-hand with the sustainable sustainability ambitions that were later all adopted.
Around 90 percent of private R&D is represented by these top sectors and a large multinationals spending about half of it.
So it's a very consolidated situation in the Netherlands, with a couple of multinationals dominating the scene.
The top sector approach isn't so-called Triple Helix initiative, you know, these kind of things,
every top sector is led by a team and that's important, composed of a chairman from the private sector and one of them a captain of science.
So that's the leading scientist from the academic world and a high ranking official from the ministry,
and we are supported by a programme office organising the demand driven joint programming and.
It is demand driven, not a full interaction with the scientific community, so it is not one way it's really the result of many,
many intensive discussions with the scientific community from budgeting point of view, it is overall a zero sum game.
Basically, it is a rearrangement of regular financial means in the public sector in favour of the top sectors, and the scope is broader than just R&D.
It's also including human capital regulation and international harmonisation.
So what has been achieved?
While this was a slide prepared by civil servants, so I must admit not everything on this slide can be claimed to by the top sector policy.
Yeah, not everything. But overall, it's a nice picture.
So for the period up to 2017, you see the positioning of the Global Competitiveness Index.
It varies a bit, but overall it's rather stable. Four, five eight.
Yeah, it improved a bit.
But what is more serious is that the national R&D intensity stagnated, as said before you see it here.
So R&D intensity see, it's one point nine nine overall.
Oh yes, it's from stable to private share went a bit up.
Not that much. It went slightly up. How about one should keep in mind that most industries invest in line with their peer groups?
So a national target is not significant for them.
But more important, and that is what is shown on the one of the lines.
The P.P.P project went up 622 to twelve hundred fifty and that is quite an increase in the number of private public partnership.
And it was the result of T.
I think it was mainly the result of the allocation of R&D spending by the private sector to open innovation.
Models like to be piece stimulated by specific subsidy programme of the government,
and it clearly shows that the commitment of the private sector to the top sector policy is down.
So to put it in perspective, it's it's about 10 percent of total R&D,
which is now what they spend in peace and don't focus on the absolute numbers because the net loss is a small country,
so it's 10 percent of the total R&D spending.
And you might say, well, this is a minor part, but this ten percent is influencing the whole R&D system nowadays.
But in the operation of twenty seventeen, it was also concluded that there was room for improvement.
And let me highlight a few wants. There are more on this slide, but a better involvement of the regions with flourishing hotspots for innovation
like we have the high tech campus brain ports in the event of an area.
That also means also incorporating these.
These kind of hotspots are also incorporating many innovative Assamese and have strong links with the universities of applied science.
So it makes sense to be involved them better in this whole policy and national programming.
On average, I think the innovation portfolios are rather incremental, so we need more game changing innovations by challenges,
not part of the existing innovation system, and integrate the societal challenges better in innovation programming.
These are, I think, the main conclusions are more some minor ones, but I think that's a fair summary.
So. Happily and the top sector policy, and that is extremely important, survived various governments and coalition agreements since 2011.
And it seems that continuity is also guaranteed in the foreseeable future because we have adopted now a longer term,
mission driven programming embracing the societal themes depicted here.
And these are very specific to the Netherlands and and technology policy start paying
attention to the key in enabling technology platforms for these societal challenges.
So what we see now is more cross-sectoral programming, and that's a challenge because of the previous programming was confined to the top sectors.
Now we see more cross-sector programming, and that's to achieve, amongst others, the targets set in the climate and energy agreement.
Very strict targets in the Netherlands.
And we have also the National Framework for the Circular Economy, aiming at climate neutral, raw material neutral.
So to say in 2050, we talk here about transitions with a broad societal impact accompanied by all kinds of frictions.
Not to say resistance. So a technology fix is not sufficient,
and we have to get the social scientists and NGOs on board to meet the challenges imposed by these societal issues.
So in conclusion, and of course, this is open for discussion.
There are more and probably better ways to improve the output of the R&D system,
rather than simply raising the R&D budget according to somewhat artificial norms.
As long as and that's important as long as one respect a certain threshold to keep the basis of the R&D system healthy.
Thank you very much.