“If people behaved like (European) nations do, they would all be put in straightjackets”. Tenessee Williams (addition in italics by author).

Europe has in many areas lost control over strategic industries and technologies. This is best viewed in the IT sector where consumer oriented services are totally dominated by US companies. Europe is at best an appendix to the American ecosystem. American companies increasingly venture into vertical industries (e.g. self driving car, public transport, tourism and city management) and thus might also take away competitive advantages that still exist on the European side.

Figure 1: Number, market capitalisation and employment by digital platforms

This also applies to vital areas like security both military and in terms of fighting crime and illegal immigration. Here Europe simply sends raw material (data) to the US instead of processing the data at home and exchanging high level information. Europe even failed to establish cooperation across member states and thus depends to a large extent on the US instead of developing crucial technologies and companies domestically. Russia and China invested these infrastructures and companies themselves and are – at least in the case of China – up to the US or even more advanced.

The US uses technologies to build and secure its dominant position globally by leveraging a strong research system and a highly efficient entrepreneurial ecosystem. The main aim is to explore technologies that maybe relevant in 10-30 years by supporting blue sky research in order to secure global dominance.

In stark contrast, Europe focusses on competitiveness as the main policy objective. The focus on competitiveness confines Europe into a follower position and is at best able to set operational goals but is fully at loss to set strategic goals. Europe has in the course of the economic and financial crisis also abolished strategic ambitions to tackle societal challenges not to speak of efforts to bolster its political and/or military position on a global scale[1].

Should Europe intent to gain technological leadership again it has to define in which areas it wants to lead the world and act accordingly. Combatting climate change is the logic area to start but all of the grand challenges are suitable too. When going in this directions its is important to

• Select topics and an approach that creates enthusiasm throughout Europe – not easy but doable. The approach must be missions oriented but with a strong bottom up component, not discriminating against startups and challenging incumbents.

• Give amble way to experimentation, i.e. asking Europeans to develop technologies that may help solve dominant problems. It is important not to define how the challenges are to be solved but to foster new and innovative approaches. This also entails that supporting real (basic) research and development activities and to look for out of the box solutions. This approach demands a restricted use of juries but resorting to “caretakers” that nurture innovative approaches rather than decide what is to be done or not.

• Developing a European ecosystem where public demand “pulls” innovation or creates a regulatory environment that guarantees widespread adoption of new solutions. This approach creates markets which are an important incentive to invest into technology that tackle the grand challenges and explore new markets. This is in stark contrast to the present situation where the public sector talks about innovative public procurement but does not deliver.

• Europe must abolish the not sound focus on competitiveness and start to shape its agenda independently with all consequences this might entail. A precondition is a largely harmonized internal market that allows companies to scale at home.

• Without determination that goes far beyond the present levels none of the above is achievable.

[1] The later was clearly a result of the two devastating wars that started in Europe and demolished the leading region at the beginning of the last century.