Future Past: Quo Vadis Innovation – Policy?

Speakers for this event

• Buzek, Jerzy

  Buzek, Jerzy

  Member of the European Parliament

  Polish politician and university professor, Jerzy Buzek is a former Prime Minister of Poland and former President of the European Parliament. A member of the European Parliament since 2004, he currently chairs European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE). He is the chairman of the European Energy Forum, a platform for discussion between European energy stakeholders and policymakers. Presently, he lead's EP's work on Accelerating Clean Energy Innovation, being formerly responsible for, inter alia, the Security of Gas Supply legislation, the EU Internal Energy Market, European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) and the EU’s 7th Framework Programme for Research. In 2010, together with Jacques Delors, he proposed the creation of a “European Energy Community”, a strategy to strengthen energy legislation and cooperation within and outside the EU which laid foundations for EU's Energy Union. He has received honorary doctorates from numerous universities and is an honorary citizen of more than a dozen cities in Poland.

  Member of the European Parliament

• Hijmans, Hielke

  Hijmans, Hielke

  Expert on EU law, the GDPR and governance of privacy

  I work from Brussels as independent legal advisor and researcher in the domains of fundamental rights, EU law, privacy and data protection. My current focus is on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in all its aspects. I was closely involved in the legislative process and am now working in various national, EU and global contexts on its implementation. I have special interest in the interaction between national and EU jurisdictions and in the roles of supervisory authorities. Another key domain is ethics and accountability. In my practice, not only substance and legal quality, but also communicative and organisational aspects play an essential role.

  Expert on EU law, the GDPR and governance of privacy

• Leijten, Jos

  Leijten, Jos

  Senior Policy Advisor JIIP

  Now working as an advisor at JIIP, Dr. Jos Leijten was programme manager Strategies for Industrial Innovation in TNO (Netherlands). He built JIIP as an initiative of TNO, VTT, Joanneum Research and Tecnalia. Earlier he held management positions in innovation policy research in TNO and was Visiting Scientist at the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Seville. He studied geography and urban and regional planning at the Radboud University of Nijmegen (1975) and received his PhD from the Free University of Amsterdam in 1991 for a thesis on technology assessment and technology policy. He has been a member of several EU expert groups.

  Senior Policy Advisor JIIP

• Pilat, Dirk

  Pilat, Dirk

  Deputy Direcor, OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation

  Dirk Pilat, a Dutch national, is Deputy Director of the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation. He helps oversee OECD’s work on science and technology, innovation, productivity and business dynamics, digital economy policy, consumer policy and industry policies. Dirk joined the OECD in February 1994 and has worked on many policy issues since then, including innovation, the role of digital technologies for economic growth, climate change and environmental innovation, labour markets, regulatory reform, global value chains, productivity and entrepreneurship, as well as health innovation. He is currently helping to coordinate the OECD's Going Digital project, which is a multidisciplinary, cross-cutting initiative that aims to help policymakers better understand the digital transformation that is taking place and help develop recommendations for pro-active policies to help drive growth and societal well-being. Dirk was responsible for the OECD’s Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy from 2006 to January 2009, and for the Committee on Industry, Innovation and Entrepreneurship from February 2009 to December 2012. Before joining the OECD, he was a researcher at the University of Groningen, where he also earned his PhD in Economics, working primarily on productivity and economic growth.

  Deputy Direcor, OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation

• Polt, Wolfgang

  Polt, Wolfgang

  Head of the Centre of Economic and Innovation Research - POLICIES, Joanneum Research Ltd.

  Wolfgang Polt is Head of the Institute of Economic and Innovation Research – POLICIES of JOANNEUM RESEARCH Ltd. and authorized representative of this organisation, which is one of the major public research organisations in Austria. He is an economist and has long experience in innovation research and policy studies in science, technology and innovation policy. The scope of the studies includes policy design, policy evaluation and policy implementation. He has carried out evaluations of programmes, policies and institutions for DG Research, DG Enterprise and DG Information Society of the European Commission, and for institutions in countries like Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan and Switzerland. He supported Ministries in Austria concerning EU policy alignment, joint programming and stakeholder process for EU FP9. As an expert, he has contributed to the recent country studies of the EU and the OECD on innovation policies in Estonia, Greece and Hungary. Most recently, he was the study director of a project analysing and comparing the research system of Germany.

  Head of the Centre of Economic and Innovation Research - POLICIES, Joanneum Research Ltd.

• Popper, Rafael

  Popper, Rafael

  Principal Scientist in Foresight, Organizational Dynamics and Systemic Change, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

  Rafael Popper (PhD) is Principal Scientist in Business, Innovation and Foresight at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. Dr Popper is also Director of Executive Education in ‘Foresight and Sustainable Futures’ and Honorary Research Fellow at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIOIR) of the University of Manchester in the UK. In 2018 Dr Popper was also appointed Professor of Foresight and Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Governance at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Russia. In addition, Dr Popper has over twenty years of experience working as consultant in the areas of foresight, horizon scanning, sustainable development and innovation policy for several international organizations, including the European Commission, ECLAC, UNIDO, UNDP, World Bank, United Nations Economic and Social Council, UN-REDD Programme, Andean Community of Nations (CAN), as well as for several government and business organisations in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and Australia.

  Principal Scientist in Foresight, Organizational Dynamics and Systemic Change, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

• Robbert Fisher

  Robbert Fisher

  President, Knowledge4Innovation

  Robbert Fisher specializes in strategy and policy in the fields of R&D, technology transfer and innovation in general. His key focus is on ICT policy. Since 1st January 2020 he is principal associate investigator at the University de las Campinas in Sao Paolo Brazil, where he focuses on the further development of Big Data and AI for policy analysis, development and monitoring. Robbert is on the board of several start up companies, a trusted expert for the European Commission in the field of big data and AI, and since 2017 the president of K4I. From 2011 to 2019 Robbert was the managing director of the Joint Institute for Innovation Policy, a Brussels based think tank of four renowned RTO’s (TNO, VTT, Tecanalia and Joanneum Research). Prior to that he has founded two companies, from 1989 until 2000 he was a senior manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers. From 1991-1995 Robbert was seconded as an expert to the European Commission DG XIII (now DG CONNECT) in Luxembourg. Robbert received a Master’s degree Law, Leiden University, the Netherlands with special subjects Intellectual property, Information Systems and Business economics. He holds degrees in marketing and public relations. In addition, he is an alumnus of the PwC International Management Development Programme, and has followed executive courses at Darden Business School and Oxford Said Business School.

  President, Knowledge4Innovation

• van der Zee, Frans

  van der Zee, Frans

  Senior Strategist, TNO and JIIP

  Senior Strategist specialised in the economics of innovation and innovation policy analysis and advice, with a strong and broad background in economics and public policy and over 25 years of experience in European project research and consultancy. Employed by TNO, the principal Dutch Research and Technology Organisation, and JIIP, the Joint Institute for Innovation Policy, Brussels. Former co-director of SEOR, a consultancy of the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Erasmus University Rotterdam, senior consultant at ECORYS and former professor of public economics and finance at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Wageningen University. Van der Zee has excellent editorial and writing skills and a strong track record as a team and project manager in various international projects, ranging from policy evaluations and impact assessments, sector policy studies, feasibility studies and cost-benefit analyses to innovation and competitiveness analyses; future/foresight and scenario studies. Recent project topics and themes include: fast growing enterprises; robotisation, automation and the future of skills and jobs; open innovation and eco-system development; clusters, regional development and smart specialisation; Smart Industry/Industrie 4.0; 3D printing; Key Enabling Technologies (KETs); integrated miniaturized systems; ICT-innovation systems. Van der Zee holds an MSc in Development and Agricultural Economics (1989, cum laude), a PhD in Economics, and a PhD-graduate diploma of the Netherlands Network for Quantitative Economics (NAKE, 1990).

  Senior Strategist, TNO and JIIP

• Vonortas, Nicholas

  Vonortas, Nicholas

  Professor of Economics and International Affairs, George Washington University

  Nick Vonortas is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at The George Washington University (GW) in Washington D.C. Professor Vonortas is editor of the peer-reviewed journal Science and Public Policy. Professor Vonortas concurrently holds a ‘São Paulo Excellence Chair’ in Technology and Innovation Policy at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), State of São Paulo, Brazil. He also serves as a member of the Innovation Policy Forum of the US National Academies of Science. Professor Vonortas’ teaching and research interests are in industrial organization, in the economics of technological change, and in technology and innovation policy and strategy.

  Professor of Economics and International Affairs, George Washington University