nowEurope

An important part of the work of cluster´s and networks is to gather feedback from their partners and to react accordingly to their needs and wishes. So let me tell you about two events that VITE and VITE members had recently been part of. I’m talking about two digital media events that showed that the interest of companies for the topic is very high at the moment. Furthermore, the EU has just confirmed that the digital economy has the potential to lead Europe out of the crisis.
Continue reading ‘Back to the future with King Content?’

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.

Continue reading ‘A little peek over CITT’s fence’

I would like to use the occasion and respond to Günther’s remark on the phenomenon that everyone talks about technology transfer (“TT”), but still it is hard to find results.

Günther writes that actually TT is “NOT an issue – at least if one googles the term and looks at the results (…) surely there’s a lot of institutions promoting it, and the EC funds projects …”.

Being familiar with the EU policy and the focus of FP7 and other funding programmes, one could argue that public institutions really do promote technology transfer. I am sure technology transfer is indeed an issue. I guess the people actually DOING technology transfer only have a different understanding about it, they have different perspectives than the people TALKING about TT. Last, but not least, they do not publish their projects using terms of technology transfer etc.

So as Günther says it is probably just a matter of (non) marketing: “Universities are still very reluctant to publish about themselves, success stories are rare, and companies do not consider such news worth while publishing”. Anyway, marketing is not the only problem, there are of course always reasons and possibilities to improve things. Continue reading ‘Technology Transfer and FP7′

Thanks a lot to Lucia for her post, and contributing to the discussion! Please let me add three remarks on this very good idea of an “open” workshop for “stakeholders”:

1. Talking about stakeholders: the easiest definition of “stakeholder” is someone who has interest and influence on a certain process and especially its outcome (although it is very common to call anybody “stakeholder” who is just interested). So it must be clear for what they are stakeholders and in relation to whom and what. Should they help with financing, are they customers, future business or research partners, are they subcontractors or cluster managers? Or do we invite them to some kind of brokerage, matchmaking or cooperation event?

Continue reading ‘Stakeholders, many cooks and the context of workshops’

The EC just launched a website that is dedicated to the regional aspects of FP 7 and therefore, as well, to our (CITT’s) programme Regions of Knowledge. What does this have to do with CITT, the blog and clusters?

Well, first of all the website contains information about the programme, an interactive map of related projects all over Europe and useful links and publications such as ‘Practical Guide to EU funding opportunities for Research and Innovation’ and ‘Regional Research Intensive Clusters and science Parks’.

All non CITT partners can learn about the focus of the programme: “…to promote regional economic development in order to strengthen the research potential of European regions and increase their participation in the European Research Area, in particular by supporting the cooperation, across Europe, of regional ‘research-driven clusters’…”

And finally we can use it to get in contact with similiar projects in order to exchange experiences regarding e.g. regional economic development, technology transfer or formalities of the programme.

Thanks Steve for drawing our attention to the questions, which at this stage of the CITT project should concern us most. For now, I would like to contribute to our discussion about the appropriate cluster model the following thoughts:

Let’s forget the term “cluster” (as well as “network,” etc) for a while. As necessary as the form and status of the association we are thinking of might be, the core of our work should be determined by the keywords “services”, “demand” and “technology transfer” (more on that later).

Based on our experience at Vienna IT Enterprises/VITE I would like to suggest two services we should offer (because SMEs demand them): Sales support, such as what we’ve set up in Vienna (see: http://www.govite.at) and simple public funding programme for cooperation as Bernhard introduced it here.

Continue reading ‘Focus on services: forget “cluster”, forget “valley”’

During the last weeks I read a few articles and opinions about Technology Transfer and R&D (one here at nowEurope by Günther Krumpak). It seems that researchers are often blamed for their “ivory tower” mentality and in consequence for a lack of willingness to cooperate with industry. Whereas this might by the case for many researchers I would like to highlight another reason for the gap between universities and SMEs:

The phenomenon of the ivory tower mentality is the consequence of an old fashioned institutional setting, which has been changed only superficially within the last universities reforms (like e.g. “the Bologna process”)

Continue reading ‘TT and R&D: The “Ivory Tower” is an institutional problem’