Europe vis-à-vis the Intelligence Revolution

Following on from the special coverage of the situation in Europe as it reaches the halfway point for the Lisbon agenda, André-Yves Portnoff stresses here the EU’s increasing failure to keep up with the intelligence revolution. While the very ambitious Lisbon targets were certainly praiseworthy – in particular in wanting to make Europe the world’s most dynamic knowledge-based society by 2010 – it is clear that the resources have not been forthcoming to achieve those aims.
For several decades now, according to A.-Y. Portnoff, the Europeans have lagged behind in the key sectors driving the economy, above all informatics and telecommunications. Having failed to make a genuine effort to foster innovation, combined with a clearly defined vision of the future based on the values of its citizens and backed by a strong political will, Europe will continue to dig its own economic grave. The crucial steps, in the author’s view, would be to reduce the level of technocratic interference both from Brussels and in some member states (including France), to foster synergies and put more emphasis on human resources, in order to allow small and medium-sized firms to be more creative – since the large ones have shown that they have run out of steam.
If Europe fails to take action along these lines and to establish a proper strategy, it is at risk of falling even further behind vis-à-vis the intelligence revolution and of missing out on future innovations in information and communications technologies. Yet these are the sectors that are now the key to the future.