Monthly Archive for September, 2009

Apply for the venture contest 2009 semi-final in Budapest

Published on September 29, 2009 in Current events, eCommerce, Hungary and Venture capital. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

A concrete opportunity for hi-tech innovative companies in Centrope is arising from the Eurecan European Venture Contest (EEVC) Semi Final hosted by ITD Hungary and NKTH in Budapest on October 28. 10 winners will get a free ticket to present themselves at the European Venture Summit in Düsseldorf on Nov 30 – Dec 1. They will also become a part of the EEVC Top 100, out of 25 most promising companies will be selected by a jury for the final in Barcelona (90,000 euros cash prize) in December.

The contest is organised by Europe Unlimited, our long-term partner located in Brussels, that has been working in this field for more than 10 years. Some readers may remember Steven Carlson and me assisting local companies from Hungary and Czech Republic to present their ventures at similar events a few years ago. This is where the efforts around the European Venture Forums turned into.

The EEVC aim is to identify, promote and reward the most innovative early stage companies in Europe with breakthrough innovation in ICT, Cleantech and Healthcare technology or services with international ambition and potential. 25 finalists will be selected within six semi-finals – to be held in Dusseldorf, Pamplona, Budapest, Turin, Luxembourg and Lisbon – and get a chance to network with investors, industry leaders and potential partners.
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Introducing Digital Network Austria

Published on September 24, 2009 in Austria and Current events. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I guess sometimes we tend to forget the ambitious goal the CITT project is aiming at. We are trying to find models and possibilities to provide a framework, which enables SMEs, universities and public bodies to cooperate within four neighbouring countries.

But even within one relatively homogeneous country like Austria, networks between clusters have to deal with various issues such as varying institutional settings  in the participating states, different approaches of the respective managements, differing regional economic structures and differing policies of federal countries. Also, even though network projects are often viewed positively by all parties, financial resources are limited.

Despite all these obstacles, the Austrian  initiative I would like to introduce to you has had a successful start. This example demonstrates on a smaller, national scale what relevance and remarkability the CITT project has being kind of a pioneer project on the international level.

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A little peek over CITT’s fence

Published on September 15, 2009 in About CITT and EU funding programmes. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

A few days ago the Calypso initiative published a blog post and link about my recent nowEurope article address addressing technology transfer and FP7. Calypso specialises in helping organisations to participate in FP7 projects. Their blog deals with similar topics and questions as nowEurope, which got me to thinking about a handful of European initiatives that resemble our project, CITT.

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Will technology transfer be hindered by lack of IT professionals in 2020?

Published on September 14, 2009 in Austria and Facts, figures & trends. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Recently I read in the Austrian newspaper “Der Standard“ an article investigating if there are enough IT professionals available for Austrian companies. The journalist, Gregor Kucera, interviewed several opinion leaders from the chamber of commerce, social union, leading IT companies and drew the following picture of the future.

At the moment there are enough IT professionals available to fill most job offers because of the economic crisis. The problem will come in about 10 years. Before the dotcom bubble a lot of young people wanted to become IT professionals because of the high salaries. These have dropped in the recent years and are currently only little above other branches. As a consequence less and less young people want to go into that direction.

Do you have similar prognosis in your region? Or is it different?

In re Bilski: Harmonizing U.S. and European Patent Law for Method Inventions?

Published on September 12, 2009 in Business innovation, Case studies, Current events, Innovation policy and Intellectual property. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

In 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the “Federal Circuit”), the federal court that hears all appeals in patent cases in the United States, decided the State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group case.  That case held that a business method could be patentable if it produced a “useful, concrete and tangible result” (and if the other tests for patentability were met – novelty and non-obviousness).

The U.S. courts, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and the public interpreted this case broadly, with conventional wisdom developing that even pure business methods (not necessarily driven by a computer, for example) could be patented.  The floodgates were opened for patent protection for business method inventions (both automated, and in their pure form), causing a spike in the number of patent applications for such inventions (and resulting in many such patent applications issuing as patents by the USPTO in later years).

Meanwhile, the European Patent Office (EPO) (the regional patent-granting authority for member states of the European Patent Convention) continues to consider methods for doing business as unpatentable per se, unless the invention has a technical characteristic.  Thus, the USPTO and the EPO have been at odds over the years as to whether business methods can be patentable, with the USPTO generally taking a more expansive view (business methods are patentable), and the EPO generally taking a more restrictive view (business methods are not patentable).

This all changed with the In re Bilski case.

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Other forms of technology transfer …

Published on September 9, 2009 in About CITT, Austria, Business innovation and Case studies. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

After sharing my experiences about what I call “hard core“ technology transfer I would also like to discuss with you two other forms of technology transfer that are working quite fine in my business environment:

1) Joint projects with research centers/universities

2) Hiring employees from universities/research centers

A very effective way for my company to gain new expertise has been to work jointly with research centers and/or universities. In all cases this has been a very fruitful cooperation, as on the one hand the RTD institution received hands-on market knowledge and on the other hand we received first class technological expertise.

As the next step I hired even employees of this research group if I planned research and innovation within our company over a longer period.

For my small company these approaches worked out very successfully. Do you have similar experiences? What is your opinion?

Main barriers for cooperation with academic research

Published on September 8, 2009 in About CITT, Czech Republic and Facts, figures & trends. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

One of the key output of the CITT project was the survey conducted among the top Centrope ICT companies and university institutions. Our team at FIRST Innovation Park approached over 50 premium ICT companies in South Moravia and received 34 answered questioannaires. Let’s look at one of the questions – what are the main barriers for your cooperation with academic research?

Several companies mentioned university departments concentrated too much on theoretic approaches and the fundamental research, having only few researchers with practical experience and little trust in commercial activities. They also lack stronger discipline and training for real-life situations at students.

Our respondents often quoted very complex and hardly usable legislation for sharing experiences & research results and problems with the intellectual property protection. They reported a missing concept for technology transfer, insufficient rules and decision making process taking too long at the university side.
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How can technology transfer work in practice?

Published on September 7, 2009 in Austria and Innovation policy. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

I started my professional career in 1993 in one of the predecessors of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) consulting Austrian companies and research centers on how to get funding for international research and innovation projects (EC-FP3/FP4 and EUREKA). Through the Innovation programme I could follow several technology transfer projects for the next three years. In 1996 I founded one of the leading research organisations in Europe on electronics and the environment and my first project again was a European technology transfer project. Finally in 1999 I started a small group of companies active in high-tech areas (automation, eco-design, eco- and energy-efficiency, re-use and recycling). For all of my activities the major driver has been always research and innovation.

Altogether I have been participating in technology transfer projects for nearly 15 years now. Several of them I would classify as “top – down“ approaches. With I mean that a group of so-called experts come together in a publicly funded project and decide that it is time to transfer technologies mainly to SMEs. After 2-3 years of hard work offering perfect technologies they are quite surprised that hardly any SMEs were interested in their “marvelous services“.

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Innovation or imitation – the challenge of China

Published on September 1, 2009 in Business innovation. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

No question, China has gone through a robust development in recent decades. The Chinese have carefully planned and implemented steps that no other continent-size country could have done. But now they face an even more daunting challenging: innovation. The Chinese can make only copies, or isn’t that right? The answer will undoubtedly shape our global future.

I recently had the opportunity to have in-depth discussions with a handful of young CEOs of leading Chinese. I would now like to briefly offer a few insights and conclusions.

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