EU told to back ‘real’ innovation

A man who builds flying cars has castigated the European Commission for spreading its research and innovation funding too thinly, and called on it instead to “focus the money on proper disruptors”.

Martin Bruncko, finance director of AeroMobil—which has built and tested a prototype flying car—said he was “depressed by all the talk of warm, fuzzy collaboration” at a forum on Re-Industrialisation of the European Union held in Bratislava this week, because “the world of innovation is anything but.”  

At present, Bruncko said, “we just give a little bit of money to everybody, where we should give it to those at the cutting edge”. Real innovators “are very driven and they are cut-throat,” he said.