Research and innovation will be our greatest asset to meet the challenges that we will have to face in the near future. Globalisation is changing the paradigms we live in and our future challenges will be, and already are to some extent, broader issues that affect humanity as a whole: climate change, growing global population, health care, etc. Problems that can only be solved by changing the standards and ways we do things: through innovation of society. Research and innovation will be at the centre of future sustainability and prosperity. Thus in 2000, the EU called for Europe to become the most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010. Statistics show that albeit effort of EU institutions to make research and innovation a priority of Europe, if we progress at this rate, the importance of European labs could shrink to producing as little as 10 percent of all the new ideas in the world. Weakening growth in investment and increasing brain drain are two major threats to the European knowledge-based economy and culture. Research is a powerful driving force for economic growth. The situation of human resources in R&D in Europe over recent years raises a series of concerns. Research intensive sectors are the future for a sustainable economic growth in Europe; However: – The workforce in R&D is relatively low, as researchers account for only 5.1 in every thousand of the workforce in Europe, against 7.4 in the US and 8.9 in Japan. – This difference is even more marked if one considers only the number of researchers employed in industry: 2.5 in every thousand in Europe, against 7.0 in the US and 6.3 in Japan. 34% of the total number of researchers working in Europe are employed by universities and 80% of the fundamental research is pursued in universities, hence maintaining the excellence of European universities is imperative for Europe if it is to become a world reference. However, brain drain has been a persistent trouble for Europe, where too many of our best young researchers leave to pursue their careers elsewhere. Europe has some of the most authoritative research institutions, reliable newspapers and innovative businesses in the world. So why is Europe losing ground in the innovation rankings? The European Research Area Board, composed of 22 high level experts from academia, business and industry outlined Europe’s needs as: “we must start by changing the way we do research. We must reorganize, to create a truly open European Research Area marked by free movement of people and ideas. We must rethink the way science interacts with politics and society, so our governance is based on best-available evidence. We must rewrite the social contract between the researcher and society, so that freedom of thought is balanced by responsibility for action. We must open our markets, our companies and our knowledge institutions so they work together more productively. Above all, we must create an environment in which the best ideas thrive, the brightest people prosper, and our excellence is rewarded – while at the same time improving the cohesion of our society”. The problems and needs are known and recognized by the EU as well as individual member states and actors. The question that remains unanswered is how do we proceed changing mindset, to change the structure and habits of our system? The solution to the problem is not as simple as changing some of the variables in the equation; we need to find a new equation that works for today's society. We need to rethink about the way we do research. Thus the leading institutions from research, industry and media have come together in the permanent platform for European excellence of Atomium Culture to jointly solve these issues through a shared and coordinated solution. The Bologna process was possible seeing the incentives and concrete vision that was created by the Erasmus project - one of the EU's most successful concrete measures to date. In the same way Atomium Culture works by creating concrete and active measure that create incentives for change and move the limits of what is possible or normal. WHY Atomium Culture brings together some of the leading European universities, newspapers, and businesses in an innovative and pro-active solution: - to make the most forward looking ideas accessible to the public at large; - to identify and reward our best researchers at a European level; - to establish a reliable, transparent and recognizable medium to exchange and transfer knowledge at a European level; - to create a credible source for the European citizens to have access to the most innovative ideas and comprehensive, intersectorial and interdisciplinary debates on issue of public concern; - to change the way research and innovation interacts and is perceived at a European level. HOW Through concrete measures that change the way we think about research, innovation and culture; that makes the most interesting ideas accessible to society at large; to change the patterns of interaction between key stakeholders. Please see: - Area of Dissemination; - Area of Exchange; - Area of Knowledge Transfer.