Concept

Background

The Forum for European-Australian Science and Technology cooperation (FEAST) is jointly funded by the European Commission and by the Australian Government in order to facilitate research cooperation between Australia and Europe.

In November 2006 FEAST held a major policy dialogue conference with the theme “Research Without Borders” (see www.feast.org/conference2006). This was followed in 2007 by a “roadshow” in Australia’s major state and territory capital cities and key regional centres (see www.feast.org/seminars/2007 ). The roadshow involved a series of inter-connected presentations from the Delegation of the European Commission to Australia and New Zealand and all three FEAST staff on opportunities, prospects and challenges in Australian-European research cooperation. These presentations concluded with a presentation that reported on consultations over best practices in research engagement with Europe. The findings from these consultations are now being widely disseminated via articles in professional publications, such as EU Insights and Campus Review.

The main lesson to emerge is that strategy matters — putting in place a coherent strategy toward engagement with Europe can allow the severity of funding, and other, impediments to be reduced in so doing intensifying levels of S&T cooperation to the mutual advantage of Australia and Europe.

The Europe Strategy Days concept

Rather than attempt to repeat the successes of the earlier large conferences, FEAST has decided to adopt a different approach in the planned events. This new approach will build upon the progress made by FEAST to date in relation to best practice strategies and tactics and will augment this by considering the wider context to S&T cooperation between Australia and Europe.

The emphasis is to be upon maximising:

• outreach — by travelling to key geographical clusters of researchers and providing more than one opportunity for stakeholders to attend;
• exposure to European perspectives — hearing from key Europeans about how things work in Europe and what this means for S&T cooperation with Australia;
• business involvement — by considering the potential for intensified research cooperation in the key thematic areas that can impact upon business performance (via diverse channels such as competitive intelligence, strategy formulation, human capital, commercialisation and business risk mitigation);
• strategic and policy relevance — focussing on implications for strategy in universities, research organisations, businesses and government.

The idea is to hold several “Europe Strategy Days”. Each Europe Strategy Day is to be hosted by a research active organisation (or group of such organisations) in that capital city.

The emphasis in the day of presentations and discussions will be upon situating engagement between Australia and Europe in the context of the international science and innovation system and on exploring the science-industry and science-society/government aspects to Australian-European S&T cooperation. As such, the Europe Strategy Days will provide an opportunity to consider how Australia and Europe benefit from mutual S&T cooperation both directly and indirectly in terms of business innovation and policy innovation.

To this end, our current plans are for three sessions in each Europe Strategy Day:
Session A — The role of Australian-European cooperation in the international science and innovation system. An opportunity to highlight the role of international cooperation as an integral component of science and technology. In so doing, we can help to counter-balance the “national innovation system” perspectives that are currently in vogue.
Session B — Articulating the Industry-Science relationship between Australia and Europe more effectively than at present. An opportunity to consider the potential for intensifying industry/business involvement in Australian-European S&T cooperation.
Session C — Overall lessons for intensified S&T engagement in which business innovation and policy innovation are integral to the objectives.

FEAST is currently confirming the participation of a number of key European speakers in order to meet the objectives of the events.