Reporting on technology innovation in Central Europe
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.
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?’
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.
Vienna’s position as CEE’s ICT capital has suffered quite a blow by IBM’s announcement to move its CEE headquarters to Prague. Beware: I love Prague, I live there, but the decision’s wording “to move growth market activities to growth markets” sounds rather shallow if applied to the Czech Republic. Sure the country has growth potentials that the EU15 have lost long ago, but then why not move IBM CEE to Ukraine or Russia right away?
I was in Prague earlier this month conducting a partner search for a social networking company. While I cannot comment on the specifics of that business, I can pass on a few observations about the Central European Internet market.
The online populations of Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Austria are relatively small. They are linguistically and culturally isolated. Even the Austrians, who share a common language with Germany and part of Switzerland, prefer to use Austrian websites. This limits the scale of any online business that addresses a single Central European market.
However, it would be a mistake to conclude that there aren’t any decent opportunities in these markets.
Yesterday, I was a speaker at the Digital Cities conference hosted by the city government of Schwechat, a town located just outside of Vienna next to the airport. The topic was “Is the digital city prepared for the impact of new technologies?” (That was my rough translation from the German.) I was asked to give a talk entitled Social networks: how social is a blog?
On the train back from Vienna I got to thinking about conferences. I’ve attended many. Over the years I’ve developed a good strategy for getting the most out of any conference. I follow three rules …
Continue reading ‘Three rules for getting the most out of any conference’
I am very glad to have the opportunity to be a nowEurope contributer. With my first article I would like to greet and welcome all readers of this page warmly.
The Brussels office of the Vienna Business Agency (VBA) and VITE organised from the 16th to the 18th of April 2008 a business trip to Brussels and Leuven for IT enterprises from Austria and the CENTROPE region. Continue reading ‘Review: Vienna IT Enterprises (VITE) trip to Belgium 16th-18th of April, 2008′
I am pleased to be able to contribute for the first time to a new nowEurope issue that so far has been quite underestimated in some European countries: Technology transfer, in particular in ICT.
The core business of CITT is to devise a strategy to establish and get running a viable cooperation between the ICT industry and research. Although a lot has been done recently on national and EU levels, Europe still gives away too much technology and know how to competing markets.
Continue reading ‘CITT: Add “Technology Transfer” to Europe’s vocabulary!’
Let me continue to post some remarks to the previous notes on the new initiative the “Centrope ICT technology transfer” which broadens the variety of activities taking place in the so called “Centrope region”. The region accounts for about six million inhabitants.
Why and how did it all start? The CITT project was initiated by the Vienna IT Enterprises Platform of the Vienna Business Agency more than a year ago. VITE is the network for IT companies, research-, development- and educational institutions which have their seat in Vienna. The main goals of VITE is raising awareness for the value of cooperation and implementing existing skills and ideas to initiatives.
This weblog and the CITT project
are co-financed within the 7th Framework programme
of the European Commission
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