Brussels, 23 May 2005
EU Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik has told an international gathering of business innovation centres and science parks that the Commission intends to improve the exploitation of research results under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).
Mr Potocnik revealed that during a recent public consultation on the future of EU support for research, all sectors had made it clear that the dissemination and exploitation of research results needed to be brought higher up the political agenda.
'Evidently, we cannot forget that research for research's sake is not the objective of the Framework Programme - we need to ensure that the results are used,' he said. 'This is why we are placing much more emphasis on promoting knowledge transfer and the use of research results in FP7.'
The Commission is proposing dedicated actions in all thematic areas of FP7 to synthesise research results and make them more accessible to those companies, particularly small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), that could exploit them. Such actions may take the form of conferences, knowledge transfer and brokerage events, Mr Potocnik added.
Alongside such awareness raising events, the Commission is also planning to extend the use of 'exploitation seminars' which, until now, have only been organised in the field of nanomagnetics. During these seminars, commercialisation experts are brought in to assess the potential for exploitation of a particular project's results, and to highlight the possible risks and obstacles involved in the process.
These actions will be complemented by the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP), which will offer support to commercialisation activities through its various network services such as the IPR Helpdesk and business innovation centres (BICs). 'In this way,' concluded Commissioner Potocnik, 'the Framework Programme will look to offer support at project level - creating new knowledge and alerting people to its existence.'
For further information, please consult the following web addresses:
http://www.cordis.lu/fp7/
http:///www.cordis.lu/innovation/en/polic y/cip.htm
CORDIS RTD-NEWS / © European Communities
Item source: http:///dbs.cordis.lu/cgi-bin/srchidadb?C ALLER=NHP_EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN= EN_RCN_ID:23857
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