Hamburg Science Summit: Does Europe need an agency for disruptive innovation?

"We need something faster and less bureaucratic, more independent from the member states. We need to focus on impact rather than on factor inputs when it comes to fostering innovation. We also need a mindset shift, a cultural change. It's not only a technical process of changing research support, but also a cultural change — and that may take longer than we thought", declares Andreas Zaby, innovation manager at SprinD and former president of the Berlin School of Economics and Law.

He is speaking at the roundtable "Closing the innovation gap: Does Europe need an agency for disruptive innovation?", held during the Hamburg Science Summit, organised by the Körber Foundation in Hamburg on 18/09/2025.

Bettina Stark-Watzinger, former German Federal Minister of Education and Research, responds positively: "Why do we need it? Because the EIC is not yet what it should be."

She also stressed that such an agency "should be independent from politics, because that would overcome the problems of how we divide money at both the national and European levels. It would really focus on the ideas and not…