European Institute of Technology
 |
|
| Established | 11 March 2008 |
|---|---|
| Mission | Research & Development funding |
| Focus | Research & Development |
| President | Martin Kern (Interim Director) |
| Chairman | Peter Olesen (Governing Board) |
| Budget | €2.7 billion for 2014–2020 |
| Location |  Budapest (headquarters) and across the EU countries |
| Website | eit.europa.eu |
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) is the research and development agency of the European Union, headquartered in Budapest, Hungary. It was established on 11 March 2008.
The idea of a European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) was developed within the framework of the Lisbon Strategy. The initial concept for a European Institute of Technology was based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is renowned for its combination of world-class education and research. In its proposal for an EIT, the European Commission put forward a two-level structure that combines a bottom-up and top-down approach as a governance structure. The proposal of the Commission was based on the results of a wide public consultation taking more than 700 contributions by experts and the general public, and various stakeholder position papers into account.
The Commission identified five specific areas of concern:
The answer to these issues would focus on integrating the three sides of the so‑called "Knowledge Triangle": higher education, research, and business sectors. The concept of the EIT has been controversial since the proposal of EC president José Manuel Barroso and considered challenging.
Unique feature of the EIT are the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) set up to integrate education, research and innovation (the so-called Knowledge Triangle) in one common organisation. The EIT finances the KICs with a maximum of 25% of the total budget. While the EIT´s Headquarters are situated in Budapest (Hungary), the EIT is not concentrated in one campus as a traditional institute, instead operating through the KICs. Each of the KICs operates across a number of hubs called ‘co-location centres’ and there are currently 19 co-location centres spread across Europe.
Before, the European Commission had sponsored some pilot projects embracing the Knowledge triangle. The task of aligning different partners and the complexity of building common ground and common rules however proved difficult. Evaluation indicated a high level of trust among the partners, well-designed organizational structures and lean management structures with intelligent performance indicator systems were necessary to make the KICs successful.
...
Wikipedia