Every autumn, organisations across Europe start preparing their EU funding applications. Over the past ten years I've worked with EU-funded projects in a variety of roles — concept development, proposal writing, project management, consortium building, communication, training, and proposal evaluation. That work has given me in-depth insights and a perspective I want to share in this article. Funding as part of a bigger picture I see EU projects as long-term strategic support

Yves Zieba is the managing partner of Syntezia, a company based in Geneva. We met for a conversation about innovation.

With this article, I am launching publication series: The Mission Way. The aim is to meet people who stand behind societally impactful work within the research and innovation fields.

Directing interview within EU-funded project on social innovation. Through this work, I have met truly inspirational innovators across the EU. Innovation sensemaking. These two words can mean many things. My lens on innovation and research-led work is lived experience and the insight of the people it is meant to serve or involve. The aim is to understand what that work means outside its own field, in a broader industry and societal context. Why is this needed? Because when yo

Continuing my article series where I explore strategies aimed at strengthening Europe’s position, I’ve been looking into Choose Europe for life sciences. A strategy to position the EU as the world’s most attractive place for life sciences by 2030 . It is an ambitious document, with a clear objective to position Europe as the world’s leading life sciences hub by 2030. The reason I spend time on these strategies, firstly, is to understand what they mean for companies, initiati

Lately, I’ve been looking into a few European innovation strategy documents through the work I’m involved in, paying attention to what is being said, what remains between the lines, and to the kind of reality they are describing — and what that means for those whose work in one way or another is about innovation. One of the strategies I recently read is The Future of European Competitiveness (2024) by Mario Draghi. Draghi is often associated with a defining moment during

Why do societies so often fail to act on knowledge and experience they already hold?

Over the past year, I’ve been part of a life sciences community where innovation is in the dna. Being here has been inspiring, as the pursuit of social impact and innovation aligns closely with the work I care about. What has caught my attention and curiosity is how large-scale missions, whether driven by public institutions or companies, translate into everyday decisions. There is much complexity due to the many stakeholders involved—be it regulators, funders, industry partn

This article shares my ongoing research journey around the Baltic sea project I am developing. At this stage, I am identifying people, perspectives, and situations that may later become documentary film episodes and foundation for interdisciplinary collaboration framework. The process itself illustrates something central to my work - how shared understanding is built in practice, and why it matters for innovation to move forward. The Baltic Sea is often discussed in technical

Around four years ago, I worked on a large-scale project developing a nation branding strategy for Latvia, where I lived before moving to Sweden. Nation branding, in simple terms, is about how a country understands itself and how it presents that understanding to the outside world, with clear objectives in mind. On paper, this may sound straightforward. In practice, it is anything but. Reaching a shared story required extensive work across public institutions, private compani