J’accuse (bis)

When I saw Fabian Tilmant‘s tweet this morning in which he regretted not being selected to go on a 10-day innovation trip in the USA and I hadn’t received any news yet, my hopes were up. After checking the website of EYIF, all hopes vanished immediately. They had already selected 10, I presume, very happy people. At that moment, I felt a bit sorry for the organizer not having the courtesy to have informed me in person. It’s not that I had just applied by leaving a name and number, no, I’ve spend a couple of hours on thinking how we could close the Innovation gap in Europa. The way they communicated, or the lack thereof disturbed me. But so be it.

I had a look at the names of the winning participants and one looked very familiar. I double checked and indeed, it was one of the co-founders of the EYIF I’ve come across over the weekend when researching what the EYIF was. I was surprised that a member of the EYIF could win a place in the InnotourUSA 2012… Apparently I wasn’t the only one with that feeling…

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Innovation for the people, by the people.

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I will be talking in favor of the democratization, and thus lowering the threshold, to participate in innovation to close the innovation gap. I am a strong believer of people who take responsibility and a government who facilitates a context in which ‘things’ are happening.

Innovation is the successful commercial exploitation of new ideas. I always thought that innovation was doing things differently, and better. Innovation comes from simple ideas and great executions, accidental or planned. It creates endless opportunities when ‘new’ becomes ‘normal’ but mostly we don’t have to be that revolutionary. It’s a given that a poor strategy greatly executed is worth so much more than a great strategy poorly executed. Everybody has potentially innovative ideas. I believe they are omnipresent. But I believe even more that realizing ideas makes the real difference. It shouldn’t however be as tough as it is today to get to that point. I hereby suggest 3 practical things the EYIF and the European Union could organize that would actually make a difference.