Reporting on technology innovation in Central Europe
As part of the NETIES project, my partners and I are conducting surveys in three markets (Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic) to determine the barriers and bottlenecks for small businesses participating in FP6 projects, as well as identify success stories.
One of my biggest barriers is Hungary’s overly restrictive data protection law. In order to conduct this survey, I need to obtain lists from EC partner organizations of companies that have taken part in FP6, as well as earlier programs.
Five Slovak and one Austrian researcher have started their business in the emerging area of nanotechnologies by establishing a company - Danubia NanoTech - in Bratislava. They had a brave vision and experience but what they lacked was money.
A startup headquartered in Bratislava, Danubia NanoTech combines a highly qualified team with wide ranging experience in nanoscale physics, along with close connections to some of the best centers of research and development in Europe, all of it in a low-cost but well endowed environment.
The company focuses its activities on production of carbon nanotubes by arc - discharge and laser ablation methods. As prepared, carbon nanotubes are purified using centrifugation. Final material is characterized by Raman spectroscopy and optical spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity. The pure and well characterized material is mixed with various polymers to obtain composites with high electrical and thermal conductivity and mechanical performance. The company can produce conductive transparent networks of nanotube with great potential applications (sensors, field-effect transistors).
The founders of Danubia NanoTech are physicists with considerable experience in nano-science and nanotechnology. They are co-authors of about 500 publications in the field of Carbon Nanotube research, and two of them share an ownership of five patents. The members of the group have been active at well-established institutions such as the Max Planck Institute of Solid State Research, Stuttgart (Germany), the University of Vienna (Austria), the Wake Forest University (USA), the Weizmann Institute (Israel) and others.
They have been seeking an investor since the company was established in the summer of 2004. Last year they entered into the Technology Incubator of the Slovak University of Technology (see the article at noweurope.com), which helped the company to start a negotiation with the investment fund.
The company was an expert leader in two proposals for the FP6 (area NMP) and asked for a support from the loan schemes. The main obstacle in this scheme was the short history of the company and lack of references.
The company seeks for an investment of 150.000 EUR for building the carbon nanotube laboratory as a prerequisite for the further development of the company. According to the business plan, Danubia NanoTech will focus on two main areas: production of nanotubes for clients from industry or research laboratories and development of new products based on the carbon nanotubes
SMEs active in the life sciences area can benefit from a free (!) participation in the European coaching programme opened for biotechnology teams from the new member states. Five highly interactive BIOTECH Venture Academies will be organised in Warsaw, Budapest, Tallinn, Brno and Sofia and over 100 promising biotech companies and research teams will be selected. All participants will have an opportunity to improve their skills in developing and presenting their business plans and to network with experienced entrepreneurs, consultants and investors as potential partners from all around Europe.
The first Biotech Venture Academy will be held on 22nd of March, 2005 in Warszaw. The basic information including the programme and application forms can be found at www.e-unlimited.com/BioVentureAcademy. The deadline for applications for the last selection round is on Friday, March 11.
The NETIES team will be represented in Warsaw and your feedback will be taken into account when preparing the next event in Budapest in June. Do you have some nominations for biotech companies active in your country?
This transcript (http://www.sbs.gov.uk/default.php?page=/speeches/houseofreps.php) is of the UK’s Director General of the Small Business Service, an executive agency of the Department of Trade and Industry.
It’s difficult to read this - either as a small business owner, a support of enterprise or someone who works in the enterprise sector - without significant reservation that the PR content significantly outweighs the real benefit.
I recently attended a press event at International Trade and Development Hungary (ITDH), held under the auspices of the Hungarian International Press Association (HIPA), where I took part in a roundtable Q&A with ITDH boss, Adam Tertak. I was particularly keen to hear his views on Hungary’s high tech sector, and roles of small startup companies and SMEs.
ITDH’s mission is to aid the inflow of foreign investment in Hungary, especially by assisting investors. In the early days of Hungary’s privatization, explained Tertak, who recently left Ernst & Young to ITDH, the organization didn’t have to do all too much. During the 1990’s Hungary received the majority of all foreign investment in Central Europe.
The very beginnings of the IDS Scheer mark stretch back to 1984, when Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer with his colleagues from Saarland University founded a small consulting company focused on process engineering. Today it is an international company with shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and a significant global partner of SAP serving circa 4,000 customers in more than 50 countries around the world.
The Czech branch office has been on the local market since 1994 (originally in partnership with COMSOFT); the complete ownership integration into the parent company was carried out in 2003. IDS Scheer ?R, s.r.o. has the ISO certification for strategic consulting for business processes and support information system solution. A significant part of the product portfolio is represented also by consulting services of SAP system, the leading system of its category on the Czech market, using the company’s own ARIS Value Engineering methodology.
The first experience with the EU projects date back to 2000-2001, when Milena Hrbá?ková was charged with management of the Software Development Department and Translation Department and she decided to take advantage of synergy from knowledge of both and accepted an offer of one of the IDS partners to participate in the first project proposal (Dromeas, see below) in order to spread activities to Europe and gain international experience.
From the beginning the company was surprised by the general settings and rather free division of workload among consortium partners than is usual in commercial projects. “However, after experience with four EU projects our viewpoint is different”, states Milena Hrbá?ková. “It would be hardly possible to specify the research plan for circa three years ahead in more details. Another great experience was work in the multicultural environment of international consortium, where various cultural influences reflected in various methods of work and communication between partners. A very positive finding was that the verbal agreements were valid”. Despite that she advises the Czech participants to specify clearly in the consortium agreement the areas of decision-making, responsibilities, project costs, as well as rights for the access to and dissemination of project results.
According to Milena Hrbá?ková the company’s benefits of the participation in projects definitely include besides the actual projects outputs building “European know-how”, gaining international contacts and information regarding European markets including the possibility to compare the level of professional knowledge with CR. Although the framework programme projects do not always lead to a development of a commercial product ready to be put on the market (the output is usually a prototype), the company constantly gains and develops professional knowledge on the level of latest technologies, which can be exerted in other projects or commercial orders – which are gained thanks to positive references of participation in the project.
IST Projects
All projects mentioned below are of the STREP type (Specific Targeted Research Project) submitted to the IST (Information Society Technologies) part of the EU 5th Framework Programme, the first two in the Health - Intelligent environment for citizen centred health management category. The stated budgets are contributed by the EU by circa a half.
The first experience with the EU research projects was DROMEAS, which objective was the monitoring of the health state and performance of a sportsman during training, especially in the rehabilitation process after a trauma. The solution is applied by the Israeli-British chain of hospitals. The budget reached 4.2 mil. EUR for 2.5 years for 10 partners from 7 countries.
Soon after DROMEAS another project was approved with participation of IDS Scheer CR - HEALTHY MARKET. It involved a web application for design of personalized nutrition plans supporting healthy diet and civilization disease prevention as obesity, atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases. Pilot projects were rolled out in Italy and Estonia. The budget reached 4.3 mil. EUR for 2.5 years or 12 partners from 7 countries.
After experience in two projects the Milena Hrbá?ková team decided for a challenge to undertake the demanding role of coordinator in the DICTATE project, submitted to the category Systems for health professionals: creating a Health knowledge info-structure starting in summer 2002. The budget reached 3.5 mil. EUR for 4 years for 6 partners. The objective was to develop a system intermediating a voice input of medical data with the help of a pocket computer, its transformation to a standard format and unambiguous interpretation to the health record of a patient.
Last year another project proposal was approved with the participation of IDS Scheer in the 6th Framework Programme, with the objective to design a system for planning surgical interventions based on the 3D model of a heart and the entire cardiovascular system of a patient for a realistic simulation. IDS as a technical partner is responsible for the functional system specification of the CARTIDIS project.
For those interested to participate in EU projects
The active participation of staff in the international R&D projects requires, according to Milena Hrbá?ková, a combination of different skills, knowledge, abilities and approaches starting with a wide overview in technologies related to the project, and openness to new solutions and team-work through a quick orientation in the imperfectly defined problem and an ability to think and formulate on various levels of abstraction as far as the active foreign language skill (especially English) and orientation in the terminology of EU projects.
It is necessary to actively follow the development of the entire project, that means frequent communication (e-mails, phone-calls, videoconferences) and frequent travelling to the management and technical meetings. Projects also require considerable financial and legal administration, often with a need of support from other parties, which have a sufficient language skill and orientation in a given issue (e.g. audit and legal services).
The essential set of skills and knowledge is usually necessary to build from more people, sometimes it is needed to find the external sources. “This means that smaller companies are handicapped for participation in projects, as it is usually harder for them to create such a work-team, respectively to allocate its work capacity only for this type of project. The tried-and-true method is to gain from the beginning experience in project as a partner only, focused only on a particular part of a project (workpackage). In further projects the company can go for a more challenging role as a “workpackage leader”, project coordinator or to try to write and submit a project on their own”“, advises Milena Hrbá?ková.
Cooperation offer
IDS Scheer CR has besides the IST projects from the Framework Programmes experience with project proposals for eTEN, eContent, CRAFT, FET Open, Interreg and Innovation programmes. The company would like to exploit its knowledge and experience gained during the involvement in the international consortiums especially as a technology partner in the area of definition of functional specifications, security, during web portal and database design and would like to reflect it in future cooperation with other international as well as local partners.
Contact
Milena Hrbá?ková
Tel. +420 543 524 630
E-mail: m.hrbackova@ids-scheer.cz
www.ids-scheer.cz
Milena Hrbá?ková is a graduate of the Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, in 2003 she received an MSc degree at the Brno International Business School. Previously she had been employed at the Brno University of Technology, Department of Computer Science and in PC-DIR as Head of the SAP R/3 Support Department. For some time she has been self-employed as an independent consultant, lecturer and translator in the field of IT. Since 1997 she has been working in IDS Scheer CR, where she was the Head of the Translation Department and later Head of the Programming Department. Since 2001 she has been responsible for European Commission projects management within the company.
In December several new calls were published at Cordis website. Let us take a closer look at some of those where our SMEs have a chance to succeed.
Totally 52 mil. EUR will be spent for Specific Targeted Research Projects (STREP) and Co-ordination Actions (CA) in the area of Citizens and Governance in a knowledge-based society. The deadline for the 2nd call proposals is 13 April 2005. Continue reading ‘New FP6 calls for SMEs’
At this year’s IST conference in the Hague it was already the tenth time when the European Prizes were awarded for innovative products in the field of Information Society Technologies - the European IST Prize. The competition supported by the European Commission is open for any organisation developing products with a high market potential and evidently applicable in industry and society. It is expected that practical application of R&D results on the market will have also a positive impact on society (employment, creation of new markets, increase of global competitiveness, etc.). Continue reading ‘IST Prize: ten years after’
Cordis published yesterday the profiles of the first FP6 projects in support and SMEs. These are listed as Integrated Projects (IPs) or Specific Targeted Research, Projects (STREPs). Collective Research projects and Economic and Technological Intelligence (ETI) actions, under the FP5, have also been extended to the FP6.
The objective of ETI actions is to use existing sources and networks in order to identify SMEs’ needs and anticipate market and technology new trends. The projects promote innovation in SMEs, compile and analyse information on scientific developments and identify and disseminate best practice. Continue reading ‘Publication by CORDIS of profiles of the first FP6 projects in support of SMEs’
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