Responding to the EU Innovation Strategy: The Need For Institutional Profiling in European Higher Education and Research

In this chapter I will focus on the content of the innovation strategy of the European Union (EU) and its potential consequences for the European higher education landscape and more particularly on its higher education and research institutions. The EU innovation strategy is being developed and implemented in response to the ongoing process of globalisation, which, in the economic sense, is characterised by increasingly interconnected markets. Innovation is seen as a crucial response to the global economic crisis. And in innovation processes knowledge is assumed to be the new strategic production factor. Like elsewhere in Europe, the creation, transfer and application of knowledge are assumed to be of prime importance for a process of economic reorientation and further social and economic development. Higher education and research are interpreted as cornerstones of the larger overall European innovation strategy. To allow Europe to create stronger, sustainable lasting growth and more and better jobs, the EU has set an innovation agenda to which the higher education and research organisations must contribute. Hence, the EU has become more active and assertive in its efforts to influence the behaviour of these organisations and some major effects of this are already becoming visible. As I will argue in this chapter, this implies that European higher education and research organisations are being challenged to develop their ‘institutional profiles’ in an increasingly competitive European higher education and research system.