Politicians have agreed on a model that will merge three bodies and unify strategic research.

2013.10.09 | Thomas Sørensen

The new Innovation Foundation will ensure a coherent approach. Photo: Lars Kruse, AU Communication

Dean for Knowledge Exchange Allan Flyvbjerg Photo: Lars Kruse, AU Communication

All parties represented in the Danish Folketing back an agreement to establish a new unified innovation foundation with an annual budget of approximately DKK 1.5 billion.

The foundation, which is called 'The Danish Innovation Foundation – the Foundation for Strategic Research, Advanced Technology and Innovation', will be established in 2014 through the merger of the Danish Council for Strategic Research, the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation and the Danish Council for Technology and Innovation.

“I expect that we will gain an effective foundation that will strengthen the links between research and industry. And I think the fact that there’s such broad political support for the agreement sends an extremely important signal. It means that there will be a stable framework for our university’s work on strategic research and innovation,” says Allan Flyvbjerg, dean for knowledge exchange at Aarhus University. The Danish Council for Research Policy will also begin advising on innovation, which Flyvbjerg also views as a positive development.

One of the foundation’s official objectives is to increase private-sector companies’ investment in research and development in order to put Denmark in the top five on the list of countries that invest most in this area. At the same time, the agreement emphasises that the foundation must focus on industry’s concrete needs for innovation.

Inspired by the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation

The proposal to merge the Danish Council for Strategic Research, the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation and the Danish Council for Technology and Innovation was included in the Danish government's innovation strategy, which was announced in late 2012. There has subsequently been some political debate about these plans, not least regarding the foundation’s managerial mandate.

All parties have now agreed on a model that is to a great extent inspired by the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation. In fact, the current chairman of the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation board will assume the chairmanship of the board of the Innovation Foundation until 2015.

While the nine members of the board of the new Innovation Foundation will be appointed by the higher education minister, they will act independently of the political system. A majority of the board members must be affiliated with the private business sector, and a majority must be active researchers.

“In future, the foundation will play a decisive role for strategic research, so it’s important that the people who head it have a deep understanding of the conditions research and industry operate under,” says Flyvbjerg, who also emphasises the importance of the foundation’s connection to independent research:

“In the reality we inhabit at the universities, there are no watertight divisions between basic research and applied research. This should be reflected in a coherent connection between the various instruments, and I’m sure the Danish National Research Foundation, the Danish Council for Independent Research and the new Innovation Foundation will complement one another.”

• Read the Innovation Foundation agreement (in Danish)