nowEurope

The ensuing post refers to Guenther Krumpak‘s post regarding the “downranking” of Centrope universities; a contribution I found quite insightful.

I mostly concur with the thesis: the gap between the benchmarked results of Central European universities as compared to the positive economic output of the educated workforce is embarrassing; mostly for the “institutes” that conduct the rankings. Part of this weird outcome is caused by the research indicators used but also the mentality of many Central Europeans that tend to criticize their alma mater more than any Anglo-American student would do.

Continue reading ‘Bad Labeling: underestimated universities producing a skilled workforce’

The phenomenon of technology transfer has become increasingly important for the economic and social development in the European regions. The critical issue is connecting those who produce knowledge and those who might be in the need of it. What is required is to build a meeting place between enterprises and universities, as well as other public R&D centers.

When it comes to catalyzing innovation within the sphere of SME (small and medium enterprises), the aspect of regionality appears to be the most essential. These small companies cannot afford to launch their own exclusive research, but on the other hand they can launch a productive and fruitful cooperation with local universities and R&D centers.

Based on the experiences from the ten-years existence of the knowledge transfer center in the Graz region of Austria, we can divide the companies into three segments based on their aptitude to join and profit from the regional knowledge centers.

Continue reading ‘Technology transfer: which companies are most suitable?’

EBAN in co-operation with LBAN held their annual Winter University last October in Luxembourg.

Over 100 participants attended the one-day event and among the topics discussed, the actual economic situation could not be left out.

In his final statement Anthony Clarke confirmed that it is the right time to make an investment in new and promising projects especially as the financial markets actually do not provide better or no return.

It has also been proved that it is in a downtime period that the most promising investments have been done.

What is your take on this statement that you should try to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy?

It’s been a while since I hit the conference circuit. I enjoy learning about new technologies and business models. I also enjoy meeting new people and expanding my network of professional contacts (especially my LinkedIn contacts). Unfortunately, I’ve been too busy of late to travel to these shows. The good news is this time the show is coming to Budapest.

Next week I will selectively sample the workshops and presentations at IIR’s Mobile & NFC Payment Strategies conference. The conference brochure promises to ‘cut through the hype’ with a comprehensive overview of how the mobile payment industry is evolving, as well as how to create successful m-payment strategies. My special thank you to Tony Poulus of Telecom TV, who invited me to attend the show.

As Vit Skala and Guenther Krumpak have pointed out, a cluster is not just a heap of companies, but rather a strong cooperation among companies coordinated by a facilitator or cluster manager. However financing cluster management is not a simple issue.

As my fellow contributors have pointed out, clusters do not generally work by themselves. Professional coordination and management are crucial to ensure success.

Continue reading ‘The dilemma of cluster followup financing’

I wrote some remarks about the threat of brain-drain from Central Europe to USA.  Recently, I have met some intelligent cosmopolitan guys, who confirmed my opinion that brain drain actually can be useful. The question is how to make most out of it? A solution may appear …

Three intelligent people. One of them is an Assistant Professor and Research Associate in quantum optics at New York’s Hunter College. The second lectures in financial engineering on Wall Street. The third is an Assistant Research Professor in bioengineering in Florida. All three are of these people Hungarians who have made successful careers in the United States. And each has to returned to Hungary and is now working in Szombathely.

Continue reading ‘Central Europe can bring talent back home’

Over the last weeks I have been discussing with Vlastimil our experience with building clusters and trying to identify the key points that spell success or failure. Here are a few of thoughts I’d like to share. I would be pleased to see the NowEurope contributors add their experience.
Continue reading ‘What does (and doesn’t) work in building clusters’

On Monday I had a chance to participate as one of the reviewers in the European Venture Contest semi-final held in Prague. As I announced earlier here there was seven semi-finals all together taking place in Brussels, Stuttgart, Linz, Copenhagen, Pamplona, Eindhoven and Prague, each picking up three most promising hi-tech companies for the final to be held in Barcelona on December 17 with the cash prize of 90,000 euros.

So who won in Prague?

Continue reading ‘The European Venture Contest semi-final results’

When you need to brainstorm ideas among a group or population of people spread over significant distances, you face several challenges

1. How to communicate to participants and how to enable participants to communicate with each other.
2. How to capture ideas.
3. How to enable the collaborative development of ideas as you get when brainstormers are in the same room.
4. How to evaluate ideas, particularly when a large group of people has participated and generated a large number of ideas. Imagine having to review 100 + ideas!

In fact, when this process is carried out on-line and over a period of one or more weeks, a better term is an “ideas campaign”. An ideas campaign has several steps modelled on creative problem solving (CPS) which is also the basic process behind traditional brainstomring.

Continue reading ‘Brainstorming vs. Ideas Campaigns’

My fellow nowEurope contributor, Guenther Krumpak, recently pointed out that European universities consistently rank at the bottom of the Times Higher Education Supplement university rankings. Geunther suggested a possible Anglo Saxon bias in the list. Perhaps. It would depend on the methodology.

What I’d like to know is how well are European universities keeping relevant with important commercial trends. I read today that Stanford University has a launched a new course to train iPhone developers. Wired’s Gadget Lab reports that worldwide demand for iPhone developers has jumped 500% in the last six months.

Can you imagine a Centrope university that responds so swiftly to market demand?

Continue reading ‘Why isn’t this a Hungarian, Czech, Slovak or Austrian university?’