To start with, a simple story. I did try recently to innovate sending my kids to school walking with their friends instead of driving them by car. The idea is to organize and gather groups of kids and go together to school in the morning. 100 kids are interested (out of 400 kids from the school). The great value for the people, the city, the environment is pretty clear. Nevertheless the objections are the following :

• The privacy : Am I authorized to collect and gather kids information including address, e-mail, phone number,…?
• The laws : What will happen in case of accident ? Are those ‘innovative’ activities taken into account by my insurance company ?
• The authority : Does the mayor agree with the initiative in the city streets ?
• Etc…

What is the key learning : the regulation is impacting innovation.

On a larger scale - an European one - , to-day we are using a GPS (Global Positioning System) to localize things and people. This American satellite system has been developed since years (operational in 1995) and we are late to innovate into a new one (Galileo), European and more accurate to localize people and things, because of privacy, laws, authorities and also finance rules,….

Other example, the e-health, which is blocked in Europe while Insurance and Health system do not consider a remote medical examination as a standard one, so that people cannot be reimbursed. This is not the case in other continents which administrations already consider a remote and digital consultation as a true consultation. If the European administration keeps the same position on the same regulation for all, we are going to be late in e-health, and in few years we will be using an e-heath system developed and managed by American people (as it is to-day for the GPS presented above).

One first proposal, is that we take into account innovation impact when proposing a new european regulation. A rule may be good to protect citizen, to protect the consumers, etc ..but at the same time is blocking innovation or initiatives. A priori this impact on innovation potential is not measured, which brings also the question of innovation metrix. How can we measure that we are late, or are going to be late compare to others ? There is a lot to do on the topic.

A second proposal, is that we segment innovation in Europe depending on countries regulation. As the regulation is still not the same all over europe, we may leverage on the fact that, what is acceptable in one country in term of privacy (for example) may not be in another one. An innovation on geolocalisation as a better chance of success in Poland than in France while the "privacy" concept and regulation is not the same. This should be taken into account when considering where to finance the development of new geolocalisation system. If applied Poland could be leader for geolocalistion, Sweden for e-health,...while their regulation is more favorable.