Speech of the Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek on the Occasion of Opening Czech-Japanese Days Delivered on 13th May 2008

I very appreciate this event. Science and technology are decisive forces in the present world, and they are crucial for success of each society. Thanks to today's forum, we have an opportunity to get in contact and to establish cooperation between academicians, technicians and firms of our two countries. We are absolutely interested in continuation of these meetings and I believe that the Japanese side is of the same opinion. The Czech Republic and the European Union as a whole are facing global challenges in the sphere of science and research. I do not mean only traditional scientific powers – the United States and Japan, but also quickly developing Asian economies. Most European countries including the Czech Republic invest too little percentage of GNP to science, research and innovation – in particular from private resources – in comparison with those which are the most successful, including Japan.

But shortage of means for science is not the only one problem of ours. Even more essential is their effective use. As far as practical results of science and research are concerned, and number of new patents and technologies, the situation of the Czech Republic is even worse than that of some countries with lower budgets. While contributions to science have been growing in recent years, there was no significant growth in outputs. We want to change it. I remember an illuminating book written by Akio Morita, the co-founder of the company of Sony. There is said in it that when academicians were given a top-class research centre and absolutely free hand in his firm, the result was number of new doctor's degrees but no practically exploitable patent. Also in case of science it is necessary to correctly set the relations between freedom and responsibility. Science, research and innovations are my Prime Minister's priority. I directly head the Government Council for Research and Development and also the Innovation Forum, which is an intellectual platform established for pushing through the reforms, is held under my auspices. It was just yesterday when we began a debate on the reform of the university education system, on o called White Book of the Tertiary Education.

I also head the VIVAT Project, which is an abbreviation of Czech words Science – Research – Innovation – Applications – Technologies. I want to say that we are interested in interconnection of the entire innovation chain, from laboratories to high technologies. We know that we need to link our universities, research institutes and private firms. The government is preparing legislative changes which will enable and motivate the cooperation in that triangle education-research-innovation. It also covers the international cooperation. We have perhaps the last chance now how to take significant step and to move up the ladder of global competition thanks to the impact on science, research and innovations. Thanks to fairly high economic growth and thanks to means from the EU, shortage of investments is not our problem now; on the contrary – the problem is how to use them effectively. Therefore, the government approved the reform of the promotion of science, research and innovations with the accent on funding of top-ranking institutes.

Our objective is to reach all the necessary legislative changes by the elections in 2010. We are cooperating with professional institutions, with rectors, and with foreign institutions. We are aware of the fact that reforms must not be implemented from above without a debate with those who are concerned. But we feel responsibility for a systemic solution which will remove existing drawbacks. The Czech research is too fragmented; it deals with many branches, not only with those which are offering good prospects. Regarding this I am inspired by words of Jack Welch: "The most important criterion is to be in first or second place in the given unit’s world market". And I add: or we will cooperate with such subjects.

Promotion of innovation is lacking in our country. Thus, the Czech firms insufficiently cooperate with universities and invest to development far less than they could invest and should invest. That one percent of GDP which is lacking for reaching the target of the EU – to invest 3 percents to science and development – is due to the deficit of private resources. We have a bad system of allocation of means from Czech and European resources. We need to give money to those who show results, not only to well prepared projects. We cannot waste finances for one hundred of mediocrities – we will rather pay one top scientist. As a consequence of these drawbacks, the asset of science and research for the Czech economy is relatively low. It is mortifying for a country with our scientific and technological tradition. Although scientists command fairly high prestige in the opinion polls, the practice is rather different. Young people are not attracted by technical branches – taking into consideration the number of university students we reach only 60% of the EU average, which is insufficient itself. Generally said, jobs in the sphere of science and research are not deemed as jobs offering good prospects, which is an apparent consequence of problems which I have mentioned.It is high time for a change if the Czech Republic as a developed industrial country does not want to become gradually a country dependant on foreign ideas, foreign technologies, and an assembly shop of foreign products.

The approved reform of science, research and innovations involves seven basic objectives.

1. We will subsidize institutions according to their results, teams according to quality of their projects, instead of overall and fragmented promotion.
2. We will significantly reduce number of 22 of budgetary headings, through which research and development are funded; we will simplify the administration.
3. We will promote and give preferential treatment the top-ranking research and we will ensure its results to be used in innovations.
4. We will condition the promotion of science and research by the cooperation of the public research with users of its results; it will be based on funding both from public and private resources.
5. We will implement new organizational structures of the public research.
6. We will ensure experts for research, development and innovations, in particular through the support of young research workers.
7. We will improve the involvement of the Czech Republic in the international cooperation.

I believe that the last point will concern Japan, as well. The Czech government wants to be active in this area. During my recent visit to Israel, we agreed with the Prime Minister Olmert on establishing the Czech Israeli Fund for Innovation Promotion. We will also sign an agreement on the cooperation in the sphere of defence research with the United States. We are aware of the fact that the reform of science, research and innovations cannot be done separately, without links to further reforms. In particular, we must improve performance of the state administration, to remove unnecessary regulations, to adapt the tax policy, to improve the business sphere and to make the labour market more flexible. Only all these changes will bring desired results: enhancement of the innovation potential and competitiveness of the Czech Republic. Japan belongs to those countries we may be inspired by. Although we significantly differ in the area and number of inhabitants, we share the same basic problem: shortage of law material sources.

Every weakness can be transformed into an advantage. The less primary sources we can use, the more emphasise we must put on our own spirit of enterprise and thinking. The Czech Republic is in the phase when its economy is not based on natural resources, low-skilled labour and agriculture. Source of our growth is import of technologies, inflow of foreign investments and capital. We must reach the same phase as Japan, when innovations are sources of prosperity. It means to promote education and investments to research and development. We do not want to discover what has already been discovered. We will be glad to learn from those who are successful – including Japan. The model of clusters came in useful in the world – link of universities with research of firms; this model ensures the transfer of knowledge, patents and technologies and their use in the market. Certain seeds of those clusters can already be seen in our country, but it is necessary to support them by tax motivation of entrepreneurs, so that they would invest in development, and by more autonomy of university managements.

Thanks to this cooperation the inflow of private investments to science and research will grow – and I regard this as essential – and concurrently the effectiveness of spending public means will be improved. Funds will be aimed at top results. Concurrently, the competition of universities will be enhanced. Their managements will have an opportunity to acquire additional private means, but higher managerial responsibility will be required; managements will directly feel both success and failure.

We will not support "research for research" any longer but we will implement the assessment according to measurable effects. In the basic research it means taking excellence in consideration through number of citations in prestigious journals. In the applied research we will give preferential treatment those who will successfully transfer research results into innovations, and technologies into practice. Also the reform of university system, which has already been mentioned, has a close connection with the reform of science and research. We must diversify our rigid system. On the one hand, to promote establishing of top.-ranking institutes, so called research universities, on the other hand to widen the offer on the lower degree of the tertiary education and to increase the number of bachelor study opportunities. It is the response to needs of practice. Someone must come up with a new idea and someone must apply it. We need far more open and more competitive system of tertiary education than we have nowadays. Universities are on the one hand a kind of a enclosed elite club with a limited number of students, among them young people from unprivileged families can hardly get. On the other hand there is an egalitarianism here, which does not favour development of centres of excellence. Further step is the separation of the basic research from teaching at universities. Existing institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences would be transferred to top-ranking universities grounded on the top research.

These are experiences which we can obtain free of charge – experiences which formed the most successful countries of the world. It is true of course that the future success does not consist in old solutions but in new ones, which we do not and cannot know. But this is not a task of the government. Our task is to create conditions for invention of new ideas and for their transformation into practice. One of these results should be higher ability of universities, research institutions, and firms to cooperate with foreign counterparts, including Japanese ones. Thanks to higher motivation and autonomy, the universities will want more cooperate with foreign partners, and it will bring both direct financial and research contribution and indirect contribution in the form of higher rating and thus also higher chances to get state subsidies. The same is applicable for research institutes. The improved position of Czech firms caused by the effective tax policy and the removal of bureaucratic barriers will enable them to seek partners in our republic and in the world more intensively. Thanks to reforms, not only those concerning science, research and universities, but also taxes, the state administration or justice, the Czech Republic will become a country offering even better prospects for investments and cooperation and in the sphere of top technologies and research.

The Czech Republic is not a large country, and as I have already said it does not have abundance of natural resources. Our best capital is our brains. When I monitor the amazing innovation power of Japanese firms which started from scratch some sixty years ago, I am very optimistic. We must go through those innovations. Thomas Alva Edison said: "Genius is y one percent of inspiration and ninety-nine percent of perspiration". I believe we will be genius.