At a time of ample attention to innovation as a powerful tool for fostering national economies, universities are put under significant pressure to rapidly develop and efficiently commercialize promising research. While university research has spun out many high-impact companies, a number of promising discoveries constantly fail to be developed and brought to market for practical use. In this context, research and innovation management has moved from the back office to center stage, becoming of primary strategic importance. The issue now is how to strengthen university management capacity in order to better articulate research and innovation.

This symposium of the Salzburg Seminar will explore strategic areas for advancing university research and innovation management, discuss efficient ways of bringing innovations to the marketplace, examine effective models of cross-university and government-academia-industry collaborations, and reflect on policies and actions needed to foster university research management to produce innovations. Overall, this conference will develop around three main themes:

1. Managing academic research and innovation for strategic advances
2. Enhancing university research and innovation: effective management structure
3. Strengthening and integrating the European Research Area through effective management

From this perspective, this conference will promote the exchange of information and good practices with a special reference to the current activities of the European Union to boost innovation and research in Europe. The conference will also act as a workshop to develop a strategy for enhancing research and innovation management capacity in Russian universities along with the concrete steps needed to implement this strategy.

This conference will be a meeting of peers bringing together academic leadership; representatives of business, industry, and international organizations; senior government officials and also representatives of the European Commission and the Council of Europe. Participation in this conference is by invitation only.