11 July 2022

On July 5, the European Commission adopted a New European Innovation Agenda which will place Europe at the forefront of innovation and reinforce its central role in shaping the green and digital transitions. This initiative is important to the Intelligent Cities Challenge (ICC) cities as it will support the development of new technologies to address the most pressing societal challenges, and to bring them on the market. 

The New European Innovation Agenda seeks to make Europe the leading player on the global innovation scene by bringing together the best talent with the best companies. The initiative comes at time of a new wave of deep-tech innovation, which it hopes will thrive. It is further hoped that breakthrough innovative solutions will be developed across all sectors (including renewable energy, construction and mobility). Therefore, the New European Innovation Agenda supports a range of existing solutions across the ICC thematic tracks.

In order to achieve its ambitions, the New European Innovation Agenda has set out 25 dedicated actions under the following five flagships:

  1. Funding Scale-Ups – prioritising the mobilisation of institutional and private investors to invest and scale up deep-tech start-ups.
  2. Enabling innovation through experimentation spaces and public procurement - improving framework conditions to facilitate innovation, using original approaches such as living labs and innovation procurement.
  3. Accelerating and strengthening innovation in European Innovation Ecosystems across the EU – supporting the creation of regional innovation valleys, fostering innovation in all regions and helping Member States and regions directing funding to key projects.
  4. Fostering, attracting and retaining deep tech talents – offering supporting initiatives to ensure the development and flow of essential deep tech talents such as an EU talent pool to help startups and innovative businesses find non-EU talent.
  5. Improving policy making tools – ensuring smoother processes to allow for better development and use of data sets, definitions and policy coordination.

ICC cities are encouraged to consider how their existing solutions can support this new initiative and further enhance innovation across Europe.