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All Insights
Opinion piece
Europe does not suffer from a lack of innovation. But while it continues to lead in scientific output, it consistently underperforms where it matters most – turning knowledge into market power.
Compared with the United States, and increasingly China, Europe struggles to transform strong research into fast-scaling global businesses. This is not primarily a question of talent or funding. It is a structural problem. Europe has optimised its innovation ecosystem for discovery, not for execution.
If Europe wants to strengthen its position as a global innovation leader, it must rethink not only how much it invests in science, but how those investments are structured. The necessary shift: Europe must move from investing money in science to making money with science.
Europe’s innovation paradox is well documented. The continent hosts world-class universities, leading research institutes, and a dense network of scientific talent. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index, European countries dominate the top rankings, with Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Finland among global leaders. Europe accounts for 15 of the world’s top 25 innovation economies.
Yet European innovation clusters continue to trail the United States in venture capital strength and late-stage financing. Start-ups that attempt to scale face fragmented legal systems, regulatory divergence, and capital markets that remain largely national. Scaling a company in Europe often feels like entering 27 different markets simultaneously.
This disconnect – between scientific excellence and commercial scale – is commonly referred to as Europe’s “scale-up gap.” But the term understates the problem. The issue is not only a lack of capital; it is the absence of institutions designed to take responsibility for execution.
Increasing public investment in innovation is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Without agile, execution-oriented institutions, additional funding risks reinforcing existing inefficiencies.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) was created to address this challenge, yet it remains structurally disconnected from local innovation ecosystems. Despite the existence of ambassadors and national contact points, the EIC has no permanent direct operational presence in each Member State. As a result, promising ideas often fail to receive the legal, technical, and commercial support they need at early stages. Many are lost. Others are identified and absorbed by non-European actors who recognise their value sooner. Europe does not lack evaluators. It lacks builders.
A reimagined EIC should have a clear and practical mission: to identify innovative business ideas where they emerge, help transform them into viable companies, incubate them, and support their growth at a European scale. This requires small, specialised teams operating locally in every Member State – with the mandate not just to fund projects, but to actively shape them.
If Europe is serious about closing its scale-up gap, it should be willing to test new institutional models. Switzerland is well positioned to play a constructive role in this effort – not as a competitor to the European Union, but as a partner capable of piloting execution-focused innovation governance.
The proposal is simple and deliberately modest: Switzerland could deploy four-person innovation-scouting teams across EU Member States. These teams would work in close coordination with national authorities, universities, startups, SMEs, and EU bodies. Their role would be to identify high-potential ideas early, support their legal and commercial structuring, and anchor them for European-scale growth in a central European hub.
Crucially, this would not be an extractive model. Intellectual property, company registration, and value creation would remain anchored in the country of origin whenever possible. Switzerland’s role would be to operate a proof-of-concept – testing how speed, coordination, and risk appetite can be institutionalised. The objective is institutional learning, not institutional competition.
Switzerland’s advantage lies in its ability to move quickly, coordinate public and private actors efficiently, and test new models without excessive bureaucracy. Used correctly, this capacity could serve Europe’s broader strategic interests by strengthening innovation retention, reducing dependence on non-European ecosystems, and increasing the return on public R&D investment.
Europe already possesses the talent, creativity, and scientific depth required to lead globally. What it lacks is a coherent structure that connects ideas to markets with speed, scale, and accountability.
Reforming innovation agencies, strengthening execution capacity, and piloting new governance models are not technocratic details – they are strategic imperatives. If Europe continues to treat innovation primarily as a funding exercise rather than a value-creation process, it will remain a source of ideas for others to commercialise.
Europe can do better. But doing so requires institutional courage: the willingness to move faster, take calculated risks, and build systems that turn scientific excellence into economic strength.
Ricardo Nogueira Martins (Lucerne, 1990) is Head of Sustainability at the Municipality of Lousada, Portugal, a researcher at the Communication and Society Research Centre of the University of Minho, and the IUCN WCPA Europe Young Professionals Regional Focal Point. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the Swiss sustainability organization PlusPoint (CHE-406.191.136).
He holds an Executive Leadership in Public Administration qualification from Porto Business School and an MSc in Geography, Planning and Territorial Management, a Postgraduate Diploma in EU Policies and Territorial Cooperation, and a Master’s degree in Strategic Innovation Management from the University of Minho.
His professional and research interests focus on EU policies, international relations, environmental diplomacy, territorial governance, nature conservation, territorial cooperation, innovation, and sustainable development.
His expertise in territorial cooperation is particularly centred on the science–policy interface, with a focus on strengthening nature conservation, human well-being, and innovation.
all Insights
Opinion piece
Europe does not suffer from a lack of innovation. But while it continues to lead in scientific output, it consistently underperforms where it matters most – turning knowledge into market power.
Compared with the United States, and increasingly China, Europe struggles to transform strong research into fast-scaling global businesses. This is not primarily a question of talent or funding. It is a structural problem. Europe has optimised its innovation ecosystem for discovery, not for execution.
If Europe wants to strengthen its position as a global innovation leader, it must rethink not only how much it invests in science, but how those investments are structured. The necessary shift: Europe must move from investing money in science to making money with science.
Europe’s innovation paradox is well documented. The continent hosts world-class universities, leading research institutes, and a dense network of scientific talent. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index, European countries dominate the top rankings, with Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Finland among global leaders. Europe accounts for 15 of the world’s top 25 innovation economies.
Yet European innovation clusters continue to trail the United States in venture capital strength and late-stage financing. Start-ups that attempt to scale face fragmented legal systems, regulatory divergence, and capital markets that remain largely national. Scaling a company in Europe often feels like entering 27 different markets simultaneously.
This disconnect – between scientific excellence and commercial scale – is commonly referred to as Europe’s “scale-up gap.” But the term understates the problem. The issue is not only a lack of capital; it is the absence of institutions designed to take responsibility for execution.
Increasing public investment in innovation is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Without agile, execution-oriented institutions, additional funding risks reinforcing existing inefficiencies.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) was created to address this challenge, yet it remains structurally disconnected from local innovation ecosystems. Despite the existence of ambassadors and national contact points, the EIC has no permanent direct operational presence in each Member State. As a result, promising ideas often fail to receive the legal, technical, and commercial support they need at early stages. Many are lost. Others are identified and absorbed by non-European actors who recognise their value sooner. Europe does not lack evaluators. It lacks builders.
A reimagined EIC should have a clear and practical mission: to identify innovative business ideas where they emerge, help transform them into viable companies, incubate them, and support their growth at a European scale. This requires small, specialised teams operating locally in every Member State – with the mandate not just to fund projects, but to actively shape them.
If Europe is serious about closing its scale-up gap, it should be willing to test new institutional models. Switzerland is well positioned to play a constructive role in this effort – not as a competitor to the European Union, but as a partner capable of piloting execution-focused innovation governance.
The proposal is simple and deliberately modest: Switzerland could deploy four-person innovation-scouting teams across EU Member States. These teams would work in close coordination with national authorities, universities, startups, SMEs, and EU bodies. Their role would be to identify high-potential ideas early, support their legal and commercial structuring, and anchor them for European-scale growth in a central European hub.
Crucially, this would not be an extractive model. Intellectual property, company registration, and value creation would remain anchored in the country of origin whenever possible. Switzerland’s role would be to operate a proof-of-concept – testing how speed, coordination, and risk appetite can be institutionalised. The objective is institutional learning, not institutional competition.
Switzerland’s advantage lies in its ability to move quickly, coordinate public and private actors efficiently, and test new models without excessive bureaucracy. Used correctly, this capacity could serve Europe’s broader strategic interests by strengthening innovation retention, reducing dependence on non-European ecosystems, and increasing the return on public R&D investment.
Europe already possesses the talent, creativity, and scientific depth required to lead globally. What it lacks is a coherent structure that connects ideas to markets with speed, scale, and accountability.
Reforming innovation agencies, strengthening execution capacity, and piloting new governance models are not technocratic details – they are strategic imperatives. If Europe continues to treat innovation primarily as a funding exercise rather than a value-creation process, it will remain a source of ideas for others to commercialise.
Europe can do better. But doing so requires institutional courage: the willingness to move faster, take calculated risks, and build systems that turn scientific excellence into economic strength.
Ricardo Nogueira Martins (Lucerne, 1990) is Head of Sustainability at the Municipality of Lousada, Portugal, a researcher at the Communication and Society Research Centre of the University of Minho, and the IUCN WCPA Europe Young Professionals Regional Focal Point. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the Swiss sustainability organization PlusPoint (CHE-406.191.136).
He holds an Executive Leadership in Public Administration qualification from Porto Business School and an MSc in Geography, Planning and Territorial Management, a Postgraduate Diploma in EU Policies and Territorial Cooperation, and a Master’s degree in Strategic Innovation Management from the University of Minho.
His professional and research interests focus on EU policies, international relations, environmental diplomacy, territorial governance, nature conservation, territorial cooperation, innovation, and sustainable development.
His expertise in territorial cooperation is particularly centred on the science–policy interface, with a focus on strengthening nature conservation, human well-being, and innovation.
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