A report from the European Commission’s Expert Group on Technology Infrastructures (EGTI), has found that Europe’s Technology Infrastructures (TIs) are crucial if the EU is to support the growth of its companies and remain globally competitive.
TIs are are facilities, equipment, capabilities and other resources required to develop, test, upscale and validate technology, with the aim of accelerating innovations towards societal and market adoption. TIs include test beds, demonstration and testing facilities, pilot lines or living labs; usually embedded within non-profit research and technology organisations, universities active within technology fields, or technology centres which are open to private and public users.
Over three quarters of the enterprises that responded to a survey for the report said that access to TIs is important for developing a new technology, method or process, but they also said that industrial users and particularly SMEs and start-ups often face substantial barriers in accessing TIs, and many businesses do not have sufficient financial resources and lack the in-house expertise needed to collaborate effectively with TIs.
The EGTI’s findings are set out in a report: Towards A European Policy for Technology Infrastructures: Building Bridges to Competitiveness, which looks at ways to address barriers to access to TIs for industry, SMEs and start-ups. With a focus on enhancing European strategic value chains and industrial competitiveness, the report provides recommendations for TI governance and investment prioritisation at the EU and national levels and warns; “Stronger and more coordinated effort is needed for Technology Infrastructures (TIs) at EU level to ensure that they can effectively support industries, especially SMEs and start-ups in their pursuit of sustainable growth and technological leadership.”
Some of the report’s findings are built around a public survey of industrial needs conducted between August and November 2024 which had 328 responses, 77% of which came from EU enterprises. SMEs accounted for 45% of all respondents, followed by very small and very large enterprises. The respondents covered a range of key sectors but mainly included health, aerospace, defence, energy and agrifood. Most respondents, 88%, were targeting markets beyond their borders.
The survey found that TIs are widely used, with 80% of respondents saying that they used TIs for several reasons including testing a new technology, method or process, or to test in real life conditions. Only 16% of respondents indicated that they did not use TIs with half of these having insufficient knowledge of TIs, as well as lack of financial resources, amongst other reasons.
When considering the barriers to SMEs in particular accessing TIs, finance came out on top. However, many companies, 30%, expressed concerns about potentially losing control of their R&D results or loss of industrial secrets.
With a shifting technological landscape, respondents to the survey also highlighted the need for support across areas such as bioprocessing, virtual testing, training, capacity building, and scientific communication. Areas where there was a call for specialised support included: intellectual property management, funding access, and partnerships for commercial development.
The EGTI report comes at a time when the EU’s global share of R&D is shrinking as the bloc spends a smaller share of its gross domestic product (GDP) on R&D compared with US, Japan, Korea and China. This particularly applies to business R&D expenditure. The report also notes that the number of EU companies that are the top investors in R&D is also falling. “Reversing this trend is at the heart of the EU’s ambition to pursue the green and digital transitions and to improve its competitiveness and strategic autonomy. To achieve this it is essential to accelerate industrial R&D and innovation, it scaleup and deployment and commercialisation within a wider context of the EU’s agenda to restore competitiveness, for instance by the simplification of the EU regulatory environment and strengthening the EU single market,” the report adds.
The report concludes: “With rising technological complexity, industry’s innovation capacity, productivity and competitiveness, increasingly depend on their internal R&D and innovation capacities as well as access to services in the field of key technologies.”
The outcomes from the EU research echo the findings of a survey conducted by SCI which found that the UK science-based SMEs were facing challenges in raising funding, finding the right skills and finding the right support to scale up - leading many smaller businesses to look abroad when looking to ramp up to full scale manufacturing.
Further reading:
• Five ways to unlock scale-up finance for science innovation companies
• R&D: Here's how pharma and chemicals industries are performing
• Innovation is key to growth. So why is it getting harder to do?
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