Europe is not lacking innovation. It is lacking the ability to turn innovation into globally competitive businesses.
- That is the core argument of a new analysis published in The National Interest by Valbona Zeneli, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and member of Decode39’s Advisory Board, and venture capital investor Giovanni Renoldi.
Their argument challenges a common narrative in the European competitiveness debate: that Europe has already lost the technological race to the United States and China.
- Instead, the authors argue that Europe remains a leading producer of scientific research and technological innovation, but struggles to commercialize and scale those breakthroughs. The main obstacles, they write, are the fragmentation of the EU’s single market and the lack of integrated capital markets capable of financing growth at scale.
The analysis echoes the warnings contained in the recent reports by former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and former ECB President Mario Draghi, both of whom identified deeper integration of European markets as essential to the continent’s future competitiveness.
- According to Zeneli and Renoldi, the challenge is increasingly strategic. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology and clean energy are no longer simply commercial sectors but key components of economic resilience, industrial sovereignty and geopolitical influence.
Compete, compete, compete. One of the paper’s central conclusions is that Europe’s problem is not generating ideas but transforming them into companies capable of competing globally. Bridging that gap, the authors argue, will require more integrated capital markets, greater regulatory coherence and stronger mechanisms to connect scientific discovery with commercialization.
Read the full article in The National Interest.
