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"Losing out without the tech" would be a better title. Also, Europe may start to realize that it has to develop some tech, such as Cloud services, itself. As @

"Losing out without the tech" would be a better title. Also, Europe may start to realize that it has to develop some tech, such as Cloud services, itself. As @jbverschoor mentions, the European attitude needs to change to consider tech as a core business, instead of a cost center, and pay engineers accordingly. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-pledges-e10-billion-to-power-up-industrial-cloud-sector/amp/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-pledges-e10-billion-to-po...

pas 5y ago
... but Europe is not just some dude making decisions all by itself. So who should do exactly what? Sure, maybe the corporate culture needs to change. Maybe CEOs, boards, investors/shareholders, regulators (and managers, and employees, and education, and ...) have to change to change corp culture. So how? Also why do exactly Europe has to do this? Is Cloud the new gunpowder? Should the EU Commission just run a big OpenStack cluster? (So these big alliances are completely useless. Just like OpenStack itself. Instead of this 10B EUR for some pet projects of random big and old industrial companies, the Commission should work on making it easier to start a company, hire/employ folks anywhere, sell stuff, make contracts, develop standards, report problems [ie. corruption], and it should create X-prize like grants/competitions, it should give incentives to build and maintain direct to end-user technology. Anyway, this is just like the F35 in the USA, members states want to spend the money at home.)
- erwincoumans 5y ago
  Tech is the new gunpowder. USA and China government understand how to prioritize and plan this. The European Union needs a 5 to 10 year tech plan like this older Chinese one: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11684 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11684
  - pas 5y ago
    Yes, gunpowder is literally tech too after all, and there's no shortage of tech in the EU. The EU Horizon2020 was a great initiative for example. The EU thinks in 7 year budget cycles. I too recommend more spending on tech and science. That said the direct EU budget is not particularly huge (just 1% of the GNI of all of the member states), but members should spend on tech more anyway. And the NGEU (next gen EU) COVID relief fund is "just" 750B EUR. (Though again, member states themselves will also spend a lot of money on boosting the recovery.) Naturally there are obvious strategically important areas where the EU as whole should do direct investment into R&D. (Food, energy security and health for example.) There's about 20B EUR / year earmarked for "single market, innovation and digital" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiannual_Financial_Framework#Expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiannual_Financial_Framewor... ) China does understand that the best way to build up a particular industrial capability is to do it. "Just do it". Especially using tech transfer agreements. Hence their amazing railway network. (But their 5year plan is not particularly interesting.) ---- I'd argue that the EU should just do more (a lot more!) of what it usually does anyway. (Which is participating in various projects, from ITER, ESA (+ Galileo), to funding a lot of initiatives like NGI.) Also it'd be great to capitalize on GDPR and other differentiating directives. (So partially funding projects that offer GDPR-compliant alternatives.) ... and healthcare, the EU populace is aging, fast .. if that's not great "market" opportunity I don't know what is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But, still, the core issue is that there's not enough direct capital sloshing around in the EU. If the Commission would partially fund targeted VC funds it could make very big waves in various tech sectors.

pas 5y ago

... but Europe is not just some dude making decisions all by itself. So who should do exactly what? Sure, maybe the corporate culture needs to change. Maybe CEOs, boards, investors/shareholders, regulators (and managers, and employees, and education, and ...) have to change to change corp culture. So how? Also why do exactly Europe has to do this? Is Cloud the new gunpowder? Should the EU Commission just run a big OpenStack cluster? (So these big alliances are completely useless. Just like OpenStack itself. Instead of this 10B EUR for some pet projects of random big and old industrial companies, the Commission should work on making it easier to start a company, hire/employ folks anywhere, sell stuff, make contracts, develop standards, report problems [ie. corruption], and it should create X-prize like grants/competitions, it should give incentives to build and maintain direct to end-user technology. Anyway, this is just like the F35 in the USA, members states want to spend the money at home.)

erwincoumans 5y ago
Tech is the new gunpowder. USA and China government understand how to prioritize and plan this. The European Union needs a 5 to 10 year tech plan like this older Chinese one: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11684 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11684
- pas 5y ago
  Yes, gunpowder is literally tech too after all, and there's no shortage of tech in the EU. The EU Horizon2020 was a great initiative for example. The EU thinks in 7 year budget cycles. I too recommend more spending on tech and science. That said the direct EU budget is not particularly huge (just 1% of the GNI of all of the member states), but members should spend on tech more anyway. And the NGEU (next gen EU) COVID relief fund is "just" 750B EUR. (Though again, member states themselves will also spend a lot of money on boosting the recovery.) Naturally there are obvious strategically important areas where the EU as whole should do direct investment into R&D. (Food, energy security and health for example.) There's about 20B EUR / year earmarked for "single market, innovation and digital" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiannual_Financial_Framework#Expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiannual_Financial_Framewor... ) China does understand that the best way to build up a particular industrial capability is to do it. "Just do it". Especially using tech transfer agreements. Hence their amazing railway network. (But their 5year plan is not particularly interesting.) ---- I'd argue that the EU should just do more (a lot more!) of what it usually does anyway. (Which is participating in various projects, from ITER, ESA (+ Galileo), to funding a lot of initiatives like NGI.) Also it'd be great to capitalize on GDPR and other differentiating directives. (So partially funding projects that offer GDPR-compliant alternatives.) ... and healthcare, the EU populace is aging, fast .. if that's not great "market" opportunity I don't know what is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But, still, the core issue is that there's not enough direct capital sloshing around in the EU. If the Commission would partially fund targeted VC funds it could make very big waves in various tech sectors.