EIT Chairman at the European Business Summit 2010

Dr Martin Schuurmans, Chairman of the EIT Governing Board, was invited to take part in the 8th European Business Summit (EBS) as a panellist. The event took place on 30 June and July 1 and aims to be Europe’s key platform for business leaders and decision makers to debate how to build a more competitive and sustainable European Union.

The EIT was represented by Dr Martin Schuurmans who was a panellist in the session "Innovating Industry: building a knowledge-based Economy". Panellists in this interactive session also consisted of Adrian Harris, Director General, Orgalime; Christian Jourquin, CEO, Solvay; Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science and Mark Spelman, Chair, Executive Council AmCham EU.

During the discussion, Dr Schuurmans highlighted that Europe is full of sparkling top quality R&D but that more output measures should be put in place. "The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) aims to produce results and the question that should always be asked is: Does this pay off in terms of new business creation?" Moreover, he emphasised that entrepreneurship education is a priority on the EIT agenda and that leadership is needed both on a European level and on the level of clusters in order to build a true knowledge-based economy.

To read the full press release, please follow this link.

For more information about the European Business Summit, please visit their website.

To listen to an interview ('Consensus is the enemy of innovation') with Dr Martin Schuurmans on EurActiv, please follow this link.

A short interview with Dr Martin Schuurmans conducted at EBS can be found here.

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