The European Comission presented the New Agenda Horizon for Innovation that stresses the idea that Europe must regain its Internal Competitive Advantage focused on a more  effective attitude towards the creation of added value in the competitive global market. 

The primal vision for this new horizon is centered in innovation and it is essential that the different actors understand the key message that comes from this new agenda of change. Innovation is in the air and the time is for believing in the future.

Innovation is a new solution to Europe.  Reinventing Europe and giving the European Actors (States, Universities, Enterprises, Civil Society) the opportunity of developing new challenges focused on innovation and creativity is in a large sense giving a central contribution to a New Global Order. The Reinvention of Europe is the reinvention of its people and institutions. An active commitment, in which the focus in the participation and development of new competences, on a collaborative basis, must be the key of the difference. These are the lessons we really need from the a new agenda for europe. 

In the New Global Economy and Innovation Society, we need a new attitude connected with the creation of value and focus on creativity. In a time of change, this message  can´t wait.  Europe must confirm itself as an “enabler actor” in a very demanding world, introducing in the society and in the economy a capital of trust and innovation that is essential to ensure a central leadership in the future relations with America and the more and more dynamic developing world. The actors from Europe should be more and more global, capable of driving to the  social matrix a unique dynamic of knowledge building and selling it as a mobile asset on the global market. 

We need a Europe of Innovation.  Where people know who they are and have a strong commitment with the values of freedom, social justice and development. This is the reason to believe that a new standard of Democracy in Europe, more than a possibility, is an individual and collective necessity for all of us, effective European citizens. Habermas is more than ever present – the difference of Europe will be in the exercise of the capacity of the individual participation as the central contribution to the reinvention of the collective society.  This is a process that is not determined by law. It is effectively constructed by all the actors in a free and collaborative strategic interaction.

In a certain sense, we need a new third way for Europe. When Anthony Giddens spoke about this special global capacity of creating a new commitment between the Europeans toward the challenge of the future, he was in fact speaking about this commitment with a New Democracy in Europe. Based in new standards of Social Innovation, this kind of New Third Way is above all the confirmation that in Europe the individual performance in a complex society is possible, desirable and above all necessary for the  future   

Francisco Jaime Quesado is the General Manager of the Innovation and Knowledge Society in Portugal, a public agency with the mission of coordinating the policies for Information Society and mobilizing it through dissemination, qualification and research activities. It operates within the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education