This week, Markus Hoerr shared an observation that should concern anyone who cares about the future of AI in Europe: Sepp Hochreiter’s xLSTM architecture—a genuine breakthrough presented at NeurIPS 2025—drew global attention from Google, Microsoft, Huawei, and ByteDance… but not a single major European tech or digital leader showed up. Not SAP, not Siemens, not ASML, not even as a booth sponsor.
Europe has the talent.
What it lacks is the architecture that connects innovation to the market.
This pattern is not new.
Back in 2007, I wrote two pieces examining how public-sector procurement influences the development—or collapse—of innovation clusters:
The insight then is the insight now:
Innovation does not fail because of technical inferiority.
It fails because the institutions capable of scaling it decline to play the bridging role.
The Same Pattern in Procurement and AI
My own SR&ED-funded research into strand commonality—and the later DND success case—was never about clever algorithms. It was about building a structural bridge between what innovators were capable of delivering and what the end market actually needed.
But here’s the problem:
Analysts, consultants, and solution providers are not incentivized to build that bridge.
Their revenue models depend on selling:
- frameworks,
- licenses,
- billable hours,
- and tech-first transformation stories.
None of these models reward them for validating unproven architectures, promoting disruptive alternatives, or reducing dependence on their own offerings.
This is why, even today:
- Europe produces frontier AI research.
- Procurement teams produce frontier diagnostic insight.
- And yet the market remains dominated by incumbents selling incrementalism.
The innovators exist.
The need exists.
But the bridge—the institutional mechanism that connects the two—does not.
The Real Question
The issue is not:
- Where are the innovators?
or
- Why isn’t the technology better?
The issue is:
Who is willing to act as the neutral architect between innovation and adoption?
And on what business model?
Until that question is answered, Europe will continue exporting ideas and importing platforms—while practitioners continue buying tools that fail to deliver the transformation they were promised.
We’ve Been Here Before
The same structural gap that blocked cluster development in 2007 is blocking AI adoption today.
The same gap that almost derailed the DND MRO transformation still undermines modern ProcureTech initiatives.
And the same gap that kept small suppliers from participating in public-sector ecosystems keeps European AI researchers invisible to European industry.
The good news?
Bridges can be built.
But only if institutions choose to become facilitators rather than competitors—architects rather than gatekeepers.
-30-
Procurement Insights
Innovation Isn’t the Problem — The Missing Bridge Is
Posted on December 5, 2025
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This week, Markus Hoerr shared an observation that should concern anyone who cares about the future of AI in Europe: Sepp Hochreiter’s xLSTM architecture—a genuine breakthrough presented at NeurIPS 2025—drew global attention from Google, Microsoft, Huawei, and ByteDance… but not a single major European tech or digital leader showed up. Not SAP, not Siemens, not ASML, not even as a booth sponsor.
Europe has the talent.
What it lacks is the architecture that connects innovation to the market.
This pattern is not new.
Back in 2007, I wrote two pieces examining how public-sector procurement influences the development—or collapse—of innovation clusters:
The insight then is the insight now:
Innovation does not fail because of technical inferiority.
It fails because the institutions capable of scaling it decline to play the bridging role.
The Same Pattern in Procurement and AI
My own SR&ED-funded research into strand commonality—and the later DND success case—was never about clever algorithms. It was about building a structural bridge between what innovators were capable of delivering and what the end market actually needed.
But here’s the problem:
Analysts, consultants, and solution providers are not incentivized to build that bridge.
Their revenue models depend on selling:
None of these models reward them for validating unproven architectures, promoting disruptive alternatives, or reducing dependence on their own offerings.
This is why, even today:
The innovators exist.
The need exists.
But the bridge—the institutional mechanism that connects the two—does not.
The Real Question
The issue is not:
or
The issue is:
Who is willing to act as the neutral architect between innovation and adoption?
And on what business model?
Until that question is answered, Europe will continue exporting ideas and importing platforms—while practitioners continue buying tools that fail to deliver the transformation they were promised.
We’ve Been Here Before
The same structural gap that blocked cluster development in 2007 is blocking AI adoption today.
The same gap that almost derailed the DND MRO transformation still undermines modern ProcureTech initiatives.
And the same gap that kept small suppliers from participating in public-sector ecosystems keeps European AI researchers invisible to European industry.
The good news?
Bridges can be built.
But only if institutions choose to become facilitators rather than competitors—architects rather than gatekeepers.
-30-
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