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Well, good morning, everybody, and what a terrific introduction I really just like to you to echo Sunday's call for action at all,

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and we work quite closely with Apple, Liu and AIU, and I certainly been incredibly impressed by some of the publications.

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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.

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So really, please do do respond to her because it will make them even richer than they are.

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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,

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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.

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So we're moving from metrics to targets.

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And we've got two fascinating speakers who are going to approach this topic, I think, from quite different angles.

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And I think where they're going to leave us is in a good position for really rather interesting discussion.

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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.

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I'm going to introduce them one by one.

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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.

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So our first speaker this morning is Professor Amamiya, who's chairman of the board and a top sector chemistry.

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Now he's got a really deep background and we're really lucky to have him here in R&D strategy, innovation and management.

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He has a degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in biochemistry, so he can't go wrong with that, can you?

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She said piously. And his previous roles have included chief technology officer of DSM, senior vice president of research of development at Unilever.

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He's a member of the Q Leave and Board of Governors, and he's chair of the R&D Executive Board.

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He's chair of the Board of Utrecht University.

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He's a councillor for the Dutch government on science and innovation, an honorary member of the Royal Dutch Chemical Society,

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and was awarded the Academy Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.

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And in 2015, he was appointed an officer of the Order of Iranians.

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So we're really very lucky to have him here. Professor Meyer stages yours.

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Thank you very much for this lengthy introduction, harmless fun.

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And ladies and gentlemen, it's it's my pleasure to speak here in Oxford.

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And this is not the first time I must say, and with a few slides, I would like to highlight the Dutch enterprise policy.

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Not so much and best practise.

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The policy I'm explaining is really fitting into the Dutch culture of collaboration between universities and industries at all levels.

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Yeah. And in particular, I will highlight it's the innovation policy in the Netherlands.

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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.

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So maybe this is a bit provocative, but OK, I see it as input for a further discussion on this topic, you know?

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So here you see a slide where the R&D expenses as a percentage of GDP probably are familiar with the numbers here.

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But when you see the Netherlands shop there,

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you see that we spend a meagre two percent of GDP and that is just the average of the European Union expenditures.

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It's well below the Barcelona ambition of three percent and far behind the investments in competing in countries like Germany,

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Belgium, and they are much higher. So Germany is at more than three percent.

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And Belgium is even exceeding the three percent investment.

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And so the two percent is so, so the figure of the two percent with a private share of about 60 percent.

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So 40 percent is public funding. And this figure is partly explained by economic structure in the Netherlands,

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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.

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So there is now consensus in the Netherlands that 2.5 percent of GDP would be the right ambition,

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forces the Barcelona ambition, and this number is now officially adopted by the Dutch government.

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And however, the forecasted public R&D investment in the Netherlands are slightly decreasing instead of moving upwards.

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And. So and although this issue was sorry, I don't.

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Although the issue was addressed extensively in many reports, it didn't make it to the political agenda.

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And there is a general belief amongst politicians that the issue is not that urgent.

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So the scientific community is still performing very well.

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Output scores in the top five worldwide and one may argue that we are still benefiting from the higher investments in the past.

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But this is already continuing this issue for about 20 25 years so that the scientific community is still performing very well.

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It's a bit surprising, and after more than two decades of relatively low R&D investments,

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the Netherlands is still in a favourable position with pretty good rankings, as shown here.

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I'm not really a supporter of rankings, but OK, it gives you an impression where we are in the Netherlands,

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for example, in the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum and the European Innovation Scoreboard.

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There you see a rather stable position of the Netherlands over the years,

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and what not really helps in the political discussion is that in the more year planning of our government,

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the R&D investments are still booked as expenses without a return.

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Whilst there is sufficient empirical evidence now that this is not correct,

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an explanation for the continuing good rankings is that the R&D norm is not that important for your innovation output.

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Equally important might be the effectiveness of your R&D system in a country.

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And here comes the Dutch innovation policy into play and the industry policy in an influence evolved over time from abroad active policy.

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You've seen it in many countries just after the Second World War, followed by a period of backing the losers.

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That was a disastrous period. I must say a later on generic technology policies.

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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.

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The Dutch government announced its top sector policy as part of a revised enterprise policy with a generic threat

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society up apart of mainly tax incentives and then specific track focussing on the so-called top sectors.

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And I've come back to that, and it was a small third track of seed capital for new start-ups.

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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.

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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

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launches top sector policy as part of a completely revised enterprise policy,

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and it's its true system transition for the innovation landscape.

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I must say, aiming at boosting pretty competitive private public partnerships free competitive up to technology readiness level of about six.

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So one, two six. And that is included in this public private, private public partnership,

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and it was meant to bridge the so-called innovation gap if it was existing at all.

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I don't know. The reasoning behind this change is that the previous innovation policies were too fragmented,

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with many different and loosely connected broken matic initiatives creating disproportional production, transactional and friction cost.

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And it was seen as far from effective this system and.

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In the next slide. Oh, yeah, that's important.

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Let me first. Yeah. You see here the nine top sectors.

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So it's high tech systems, life sciences hands.

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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.

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Maybe we find time somewhere during the breaks to highlight it further.

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If somebody is interested,

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these top sectors were selected because we feel that they have a particular international advantage and an opportunity for accelerated growth.

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So that was them were the main selection criteria. So it's about our future earning potential in the Netherlands,

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going hand-in-hand with the sustainable sustainability ambitions that were later all adopted.

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Around 90 percent of private R&D is represented by these top sectors and a large multinationals spending about half of it.

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So it's a very consolidated situation in the Netherlands, with a couple of multinationals dominating the scene.

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The top sector approach isn't so-called Triple Helix initiative, you know, these kind of things,

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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.

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So that's the leading scientist from the academic world and a high ranking official from the ministry,

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and we are supported by a programme office organising the demand driven joint programming and.

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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,

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many intensive discussions with the scientific community from budgeting point of view, it is overall a zero sum game.

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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.

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It's also including human capital regulation and international harmonisation.

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So what has been achieved?

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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.

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Yeah, not everything. But overall, it's a nice picture.

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So for the period up to 2017, you see the positioning of the Global Competitiveness Index.

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It varies a bit, but overall it's rather stable. Four, five eight.

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Yeah, it improved a bit.

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But what is more serious is that the national R&D intensity stagnated, as said before you see it here.

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So R&D intensity see, it's one point nine nine overall.

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Oh yes, it's from stable to private share went a bit up.

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Not that much. It went slightly up. How about one should keep in mind that most industries invest in line with their peer groups?

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So a national target is not significant for them.

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But more important, and that is what is shown on the one of the lines.

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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.

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And it was the result of T.

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I think it was mainly the result of the allocation of R&D spending by the private sector to open innovation.

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Models like to be piece stimulated by specific subsidy programme of the government,

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and it clearly shows that the commitment of the private sector to the top sector policy is down.

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So to put it in perspective, it's it's about 10 percent of total R&D,

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which is now what they spend in peace and don't focus on the absolute numbers because the net loss is a small country,

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so it's 10 percent of the total R&D spending.

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And you might say, well, this is a minor part, but this ten percent is influencing the whole R&D system nowadays.

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But in the operation of twenty seventeen, it was also concluded that there was room for improvement.

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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

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like we have the high tech campus brain ports in the event of an area.

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That also means also incorporating these.

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These kind of hotspots are also incorporating many innovative Assamese and have strong links with the universities of applied science.

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So it makes sense to be involved them better in this whole policy and national programming.

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On average, I think the innovation portfolios are rather incremental, so we need more game changing innovations by challenges,

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not part of the existing innovation system, and integrate the societal challenges better in innovation programming.

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These are, I think, the main conclusions are more some minor ones, but I think that's a fair summary.

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So. Happily and the top sector policy, and that is extremely important, survived various governments and coalition agreements since 2011.

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And it seems that continuity is also guaranteed in the foreseeable future because we have adopted now a longer term,

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mission driven programming embracing the societal themes depicted here.

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And these are very specific to the Netherlands and and technology policy start paying

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attention to the key in enabling technology platforms for these societal challenges.

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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.

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Now we see more cross-sector programming, and that's to achieve, amongst others, the targets set in the climate and energy agreement.

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Very strict targets in the Netherlands.

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And we have also the National Framework for the Circular Economy, aiming at climate neutral, raw material neutral.

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So to say in 2050, we talk here about transitions with a broad societal impact accompanied by all kinds of frictions.

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Not to say resistance. So a technology fix is not sufficient,

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and we have to get the social scientists and NGOs on board to meet the challenges imposed by these societal issues.

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So in conclusion, and of course, this is open for discussion.

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There are more and probably better ways to improve the output of the R&D system,

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rather than simply raising the R&D budget according to somewhat artificial norms.

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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.

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Thank you very much.