Interview with Mr. Thomas Andersson
Mr. Thomas Andersson
Mr. Thomas Andersson is Vice President of the INSME Association since its establishment in February 2004. He is also President of the International Organisation for Knowledge Economy and Enterprise Development (IKED), INSME Member. In this interview he highlights the importance for potential participants of the next INSME international conference in Montevideo and explains its concrete usefulness.
INSME Association’s President talks about the future of the INSME Association and the theme of the INSME Annual Meeting 2006
INSME: As President of the International Organisation for Knowledge Economy and Enterprise development (IKED), and obviously as INSME Vice-President, you have a privileged perspective on innovation policy creation. Based on your experience, what are the main issues influencing innovation policy creation today, both at national and international level?
Mr. Andersson: Great opportunity for making economies more competitive and societies more capable to deal with sharpening international competition and needs for restructuring. The issues today have to do with the challenge of overcoming vested interests, that of disentangling innovation policy from traditional science and technology policy, and to span other relevant policy domains such as fiscal policy.
INSME: What do you view as the contribution of international events like the INSME Annual Meeting to influencing or inspiring concrete action-taking by policy makers and innovation players?
Mr. Andersson: If able to bring together very different countries and representatives which accumulated different relevant background, and if connected to real agendas and actions, the meeting can be very useful in diffusing ideas, providing inspiration, and also for allowing for new contacts that can lead to new very much needed international programme initiatives.
INSME: The theme of the INSME International Conference 2006 is "Boosting Innovation by Bridging the Knowledge Gap: a Developer-User Approach". Regardless of the specific topics and issues that will be developed during the conference, what does this theme mean to you? What are your expectations for the outcomes of this conference?
Mr. Andersson: Capturing the benefits of innovation is very different for leaders and followers of technology, which often operate under very different constraints and conditions. Understanding the gap between them, and how it can be bridged, will be very useful for many actors connected to the innovation system.
INSME: The INSME Annual Meeting 2006 will also be an occasion to unveil and discuss future plans for the development of the INSME Association. What is your vision of the Association for 2006 and onwards?
Mr. Andersson: The association already brings together a number of players. I hope it will continue to expand internationally, bridge regional and sectoral groupings, get a full-fledged representation from different kinds of regions, spur increasingly tangible co-operation on concrete projects, involve more partners in active exchange and dialogue, and also spur the development of new professional public and private services of relevance to innovation, growth and prosperity.
