The title of this post is a quotation from Meir Brand’s presentation, delivered at Innovation Thursday in Prague last week. The event attracted about 130 people and was organised in cooperation with our FIRST Innovation Park and the CITT project. Michael Novak and I also took part in the founding meeting of the Innovators Club where we talked to several key ICT innovation players in the Czech Republic.
I wrote down a few remarks that seem to me highly relevant to the technology transfer activities within CITT and thus I am offering them as the starting points for our cluster strategy development.
Continue reading ‘Some secrets are more valuable when shared’
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?
Continue reading ‘IBM CEE: Na shledanou to Vienna’
I recently had a drink with two Hungarian entrepreneurs who are working on an interesting mashup. They’ve created a front end for Google that closely resembles the functionality of Startlap.hu (for my Hungarian-impaired readers, this translates as “start page”.)
Their creation, Godzi.hu (no idea what that means) is now in public beta. The functionality is, indeed, impressive. But how do the founders take this great idea and make it into a business?
Let’s start by talking about what Godzi does.
Continue reading ‘Godzi is a refreshing idea but will people use it?’
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.
Continue reading ‘Online opportunities in Central Europe’
Early this year I was invited to become a team member contributing to the Regional Innovation Strategy of Southern Moravia within the working group responsible for communication and international relations. One of the topics discussed was how to coordinate activities realized by a large number of institutions.
Continue reading ‘Is there an innovation calendar?’
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’
Thursday afternoon I spent in Prague at an event dedicated to investments into technology start-ups. I was listening to a VC fund, two business angels and two incubators sharing their views with an audience of mostly ICT entrepreneurs.
The whole concept of Innovation Thursdays is focused on innovation in the Czech Republic and on bringing together innovators, investors and policy makers. Take a look at the opening event of the series held in the Senate hall (video archive and photos).
Continue reading ‘Can Central Europe follow Israeli innovation examples?’
I am very glad to have the opportunity to be a nowEurope contributor. With my first article and warm welcome I would like to call your attention to global warming, in particular to the ICT aspects of the combat against climate change.
As part of its effort to combat climate change, the European Commission recently announced that it would promote the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) to improve energy efficiency throughout the economy.
Continue reading ‘ICT to combat climate change’
This week I will be away for business in Prague, representing a social networking company preparing to launch a social networking site in the Czech Republic. I would be pleased to meet with any nowEurope readers while in Prague. (Write me at: steve [at] noweurope [dot] com)
While Budapest and Prague might seem like neighbors on the map, I will travel all night by train to get there. However, one difference on this trip is that I will be able to sleep. From January 1, Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia are part of the Schengen system. That means no more midnight knocks to check my passport.
I will share my observations about the Czech online market upon my return to Budapest later this week.
I’d like to about hear your experiences with technology transfer. I’m addressing this request to the nowEurope contributors circle, many of whom I have only recently met. My experience has mainly been with small, entrepreneurial startups in Internet media.
However, I do recall that some fifteen years ago when I used a text interface to navigate the Internet through the Siemens Data-P network I discovered a Hungarian professor who had a working copy of Mosiac, the first primitive web browser. His student later told me the professor had refused to post a copy of Mosiac on the open university for others to use.
Continue reading ‘Confessions of a tech transfer newbie’
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