I’m pleased to inform you all that the ITnT (Trade Fair for Information Technology and Telecommunication focused on Central Europe) will take place from the 27th to the 29th of January 2009 in Vienna at the “Messe Wien”!
This year my organization, Vienna IT Enterprises (VITE), will be represented together with the ZIT (Center for Innovation and Technology) that is in charge of company research and innovation in Vienna.
We will provide information on the VITE network, our recent activities and projects such as the CITT project. ZIT will provide information about several ongoing technology funding programs and will offers advice about enabling innovation transfer from science partners to SMEs in Vienna. The advising process can already start at the fair, so do not miss this chance!
I hope that this event further fosters an exchange between research and development institutions. We would be very pleased to welcome you at the fair! The VITE stand is located in “Halle C”.
If you need free tickets do not hesitate to contact us by email (vite@vite.at).
Further information at: www.itnt.at
Several years ago, a former business partner and I were speculating about how the mobile operator industry would evolve. The mobile phone business was booming, but it was already clear that growth had limits. What to do once every citizen had a handset?
The solution seemed obvious even then. As mobile services evolved, the phone would eventually be used as a payment mechanism. By controlling the payment interface, operators stood to make a fortune from transaction fees. Could mobile operators eventual evolve into financial institutions or even banks?
Something like this has happened in Austria, as I learned at a recent conference, IIR’s Mobile and NSF Payment Strategies, held here in Budapest.
Continue reading ‘Want to launch mobile payments? Buy a bank’
Albeit still being positive that consumer spending in Central European economies namely Germany or Austria will be more robust than largely expected, a recession seems to be unavoidable; even to optimists like me. Hoping that the recession will be a rather mild one, it might be useful to highlight the expected impact on Centrope’s ICT industry, including the identification of opportunities that might occur amidst crisis:
Continue reading ‘Centrope ICT: opportunities amidst looming recession?’
The ensuing post refers to Guenther Krumpak‘s post regarding the “downranking” of Centrope universities; a contribution I found quite insightful.
I mostly concur with the thesis: the gap between the benchmarked results of Central European universities as compared to the positive economic output of the educated workforce is embarrassing; mostly for the “institutes” that conduct the rankings. Part of this weird outcome is caused by the research indicators used but also the mentality of many Central Europeans that tend to criticize their alma mater more than any Anglo-American student would do.
Continue reading ‘Bad Labeling: underestimated universities producing a skilled workforce’
I wrote some remarks about the threat of brain-drain from Central Europe to USA. Recently, I have met some intelligent cosmopolitan guys, who confirmed my opinion that brain drain actually can be useful. The question is how to make most out of it? A solution may appear …
Three intelligent people. One of them is an Assistant Professor and Research Associate in quantum optics at New York’s Hunter College. The second lectures in financial engineering on Wall Street. The third is an Assistant Research Professor in bioengineering in Florida. All three are of these people Hungarians who have made successful careers in the United States. And each has to returned to Hungary and is now working in Szombathely.
Continue reading ‘Central Europe can bring talent back home’
The old Indextools website is gone. The new Yahoo! Analytics website is minimalistic, offering just the home page and a second page describing the features. That’s appropriate, because this incarnation of Indextools doesn’t have to sell. It’s Yahoo! And it’s free.
However, the technology behind the screens is still 100% Indextools. They probably have four or five times more server capacity, but the features are essentially the same ones I described on the original site. (Disclosure: I was the marketing director in 2004-2005.)
In the first part of this case study I described how Indextools minimized its weaknesses to compete with VC-funded US companies. This time around I’ll talk about how this scrappy Hungarian startup maximized its natural strengths to build a world class business.
Continue reading ‘Indextools: How to maximize your strengths (part two)’
Central Europe is full of long-haired academics who love to tinker in their university laboratories and workshops. Most of these guys wouldn’t know a business opportunity if it hit them on the head. Technology transfer is a public sector buzzword for funding projects to extract those ideas from the laboratory and develop real world businesses. The catch is that we don’t see too many examples yet.
The last dozen nowEurope posts have contributed to my understanding of Central Europe’s innovation dilemma, but I am not yet persuaded that technology transfer is not just wishful thinking. I found it useful to summarize where we stand in order to highlight what we still need to know.
Continue reading ‘CEE innovation: what we know so far’
Encouraged by recent postings and an interesting article from Romania from 2006 http://mises.org/story/2371 I want to join the brain drain debate.
Austria has been suffering from brain drain during the entire 2nd half of the 20th century but has recently introduced measures to get good people back: An organisation called BrainPower www.brainpower-austria.at, a department of Austria’s research funding and promotion agency FFG www.ffg.at is offering support for researchers who are interested in getting back to Austria (jobs, accommodation, travel costs, information etc.). They work closely together with an organisation called ASCINA, Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America, an initiative of the Office of Science and Technology (OST) at the Austrian Embassy in Washington D.C. www.ascina.at, this, because a major part of the brains that emigrated have drained to North America.
Networking plus practical support obviously help, as their statistics show, but the best proof for real breakthroughs is “give them appropriate playgrounds, and they come back themselves”.
Continue reading ‘Brain Drain: The Austrians have suffered and learned’
Moving forward, nowEurope will be not only mapping our topics and bringing news through the posts. We have integrated several data feeds to other community driven (or web 2.0 if you like) services in the right column.
Continue reading ‘Let’s share useful links and relevant photos’
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.
Continue reading ‘The plant bears its flowers in clusters’
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