This post is somehow a free analysis of my observations, and you, dear readers and bloggers, can verify together with me if my observations and conclusions apply.
Recently I commented IBM CEE’s move from Vienna to Prague. I said that this move has no reasonable background, as the Czech Republic is no low-cost low-wage country anymore and if IBM wants growth, why not go to Russia right away.
At the same time it was announced that Siemens rail vehicles is closing down in Prague. No tit-for-tat feelings. Everybody who has his/her eyes open can see that classical production moves east.
Yesterday I attended an event where one of Austria’s top ICT researchers, Bruno Buchberger (one of the top three worldwide in Symbolic Computation) presented his new master studies program mainly targeted to foreigners as in Austria they do not have enough top qualified computer science students.
The US and the UK, France, Canada and Australia actively recruit top students from India, China, Indonesia and all over the world trying to fill their top institutes by paying the graduates’ tuition.
Today we learn that Siemens wants to give up its hardware joint venture with Fujitsu, and Chinese computer giant Lenovo wants to take over.
Everybody says the only solution to Europe’s industrial drain is massive upgrade of skills and qualifications. I am part of the CITT consortium who’s raison d’être is to enhance technology transfer from research to industry – exactly for the reasons stated above. But the problems we’re facing here may be beyond our and even Europe’s horizon if we try to migrate to information society structures but lack the people who are supposed to do the work.
Am I too pessimistic? I do not doubt that CITT will be able to help quite a number of ICT SMEs in the Centrope countries to upgrade competitiveness by collaboration with universities. But we have already 2008 and we work on structures that should have been established twenty years ago, all over Europe.
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We have no structures. I see the problem is the lack of qualities-skills in governments. They are to create sound incentives, services, support systems, norms, educational systems that would produce entrepreneurs remove risk taking mentality, install can do thinking. This is a long term process, and I guess not many politicians have a long term objectives, strategy in this field, at least in CEE.