{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Benevolent Disruptors","title":"Episode 11 | Michiel Scheffer, President of the Board, European Innovation Council ","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1398,"description":"In this episode of the Benevolent Disruptors Interview Series, we welcome Michiel Scheffer, President of the Board at the European Innovation Council (EIC). The EIC is the European Union's flagship innovation body, deploying a €1.4 billion annual budget across the continent's most daring technology investments, from quantum computing and AI to biorefinery and fusion. A founder, innovation investor, minister, professor, and author of over 100 publications, Michiel has been nominated as the best regional politician in the Netherlands and has seen Europe's innovation landscape from almost every possible angle. Under his leadership, the EIC supports beneficiaries across 27 EU member states plus Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and Israel, with an underlying portfolio of more than 800 companies. The conversation explores why Europe punches above its weight in producing unicorn founders but struggles to capture their scaled value, how fragmentation across 27 countries creates both barriers and opportunities, and why the next decade of AI, quantum, and defence tech could be Europe's to lose… or to win. Michiel unpacks the EIC's new €5 billion scale-up fund, why European capital markets urgently need reform, and how the continent's industrial backbone, research translation, and dual-use defence capabilities position it for a new era of \"Benevolent Disruption.\" Key Takeaways: Why 24% of the world's unicorn founders are European yet only 6% of global unicorn enterprise value is captured in Europe (and why scaling, not starting, is Europe's real challenge) How the EIC's €5 billion scale-up fund, built alongside pension funds, foundations, and insurers, is designed to plug Europe's late-stage capital gap Why Europeans invest €800 billion a year into the US while their own start-ups remain under-capitalised, and what a Capital Savings Union could unlock. How Europe is quietly leading in industrial AI, health diagnostics AI, and causal (rather than purely correlational) model...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/e3_GV3LBH7RGlOeqljrTYvIZI-Lp7_153hlD3SBJPgk/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8wMDlm/Y2U3OTljNmQxM2Jk/YzBhNzVhNTQ3OTgz/NzU4Yi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}