Central Europe is full of long-haired academics who love to tinker in their university laboratories and workshops. Most of these guys wouldn’t know a business opportunity if it hit them on the head. Technology transfer is a public sector buzzword for funding projects to extract those ideas from the laboratory and develop real world businesses. The catch is that we don’t see too many examples yet.
The last dozen nowEurope posts have contributed to my understanding of Central Europe’s innovation dilemma, but I am not yet persuaded that technology transfer is not just wishful thinking. I found it useful to summarize where we stand in order to highlight what we still need to know.
Continue reading ‘CEE innovation: what we know so far’
Encouraged by recent postings and an interesting article from Romania from 2006 http://mises.org/story/2371 I want to join the brain drain debate.
Austria has been suffering from brain drain during the entire 2nd half of the 20th century but has recently introduced measures to get good people back: An organisation called BrainPower www.brainpower-austria.at, a department of Austria’s research funding and promotion agency FFG www.ffg.at is offering support for researchers who are interested in getting back to Austria (jobs, accommodation, travel costs, information etc.). They work closely together with an organisation called ASCINA, Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America, an initiative of the Office of Science and Technology (OST) at the Austrian Embassy in Washington D.C. www.ascina.at, this, because a major part of the brains that emigrated have drained to North America.
Networking plus practical support obviously help, as their statistics show, but the best proof for real breakthroughs is “give them appropriate playgrounds, and they come back themselves”.
Continue reading ‘Brain Drain: The Austrians have suffered and learned’
There is an enormous willingness from state policy makers to boost research and development activity in various countries of the Centrope region. The question is does this work?
Facts: in Hungary the R&D spending is app. 1% of the GPD. 90% of the spending comes from the public sector. The number of scientific researchers is extremely low, and brain drain has accelerated in recent years. The percentage of small- and medium sized enterprises is low, meanwhile their research budget is also insignificant. The percentage of graduates in real sciences is less than 8% of total graduates.
Continue reading ‘R&D – no impact of public money?’
I still wonder whether somebody of you is aware of a website where organisers share their planned events not to compete for the limited attention of the same target groups. Or can we list at least the main ICT innovation events held regularly in our region? This is certainly one of the questions to be asked when developing our cluster strategy next year.
We are discussing with Gunther Krumpak what upcoming events would be the most relevant to presenting the CITT outcomes or to collecting experience and best practices. Continue reading ‘Best practices from cluster initiatives’
In recent years, more and more countries report passing the 100% mobile penetration barrier. Currently that is the case in most of the EU member states.
However, it is evident that this figure is not the same as 100% mobile ownership.
Continue reading ‘Counting mobile phones - beyond 100% penetration’
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), multinationals have been the key driver of Central European business innovation in recent years. While this innovation has brought benefits, it has not helped local companies, nor has it prepared the region for the challenges ahead.
In fact, a dependence on multinational innovation has left Central Europe’s economies vulnerable, according the EIU report entitled ‘A Time For New Ideas: Innovation in Central Europe‘, sponsored by Oracle Corporation. While a handful of local SMEs have managed to innovate, the region faces a shortage of talent and a lack of support for innovation among local governments.
Continue reading ‘EIU: Multinational innovation in CEE is not enough’
Today I would like to present you one Viennese research institution and one company (Competence Center) successfully involved in R&D-activities. Both of them are quite important for our city.
These two organizations have an excellent international reputation and both of them are running successful cross-border projects and have finalized some very interesting ones in the past.
Continue reading ‘Vienna, Austria – A Spot of Excellence’
Most people think a blog is about printed words. And it is. However, what you might not know is that the lifeblood of a blog is human relationships. There is more going on behind your computer screen than meets the eye.
This dynamic might be obvious to those of you who spend most of your days online (like me). Others might appreciate a few insights into how this works - and how you can take part.
Continue reading ‘nowEurope is a web of relationships’
We are still in the early phase of our publishing effort here at nowEurope connected with the Centrope ICT transfer project and keep identifying the main issues and common interests in our region of the Central Europe.
Technology transfer is a term widely used but it is often understood in quite different ways. Some people even take it just as another buzzword and so let’s take a closer look what it represents for us. For you. What are the topics or concrete questions interesting you and us the most?
Continue reading ‘What technology transfer questions interest you most?’
The European Comission published its Progress Report on the Single European Electronic Communications Market in 2007. It contains a comparison of fixed broadband penetration rates together with the speed of progress. Although in January 2008, Austria has a penetration rate near to the EU27 average of 20%, the country also showed the smallest increase in penetration rate over the previous year.
However, these figures may also be misleading due to the ongoing evolution in broadband technologies. Continue reading ‘Broadband penetration - Is Austria lagging behind?’
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