Earlier this year, in April 2008, Yahoo! Inc announced that it had acquired the full assets of a Budapest company, Tensa Kft, which operates the Web Analytics service Indextools. Yahoo! is now conducting a major upgrade of the company’s technical infrastructure in order relaunch Indextools as a free service bundled to its Yahoo! Advertising network - in a fashion similar to Google Analytics. (Disclosure: I worked as Marketing Director at Indextools in 2004 and 2005.)
I wish that I could point to this deal as part of a trend, but it is not. Few Central European Internet businesses can compete head to head with VC-funded US companies, as Indextools successfully did. However, Indextools does offer an useful case study of how CEE businesses can maximize their local advantages while minimizing their weaknesses, in order to win business on global markets.
Continue reading ‘Indextools: How to minimize your weaknesses (part one)’
EurActive writes that the Czechs intend to shine a spotlight on entrepreneurship during the upcoming presidency of the European Union in January-June 2009.
“In the Czech Republic we lack private money in support of entrepreneurship, incubators and research projects,” said Czech Education Minister Ondrej Liška, adding that the problem was the same in all other EU countries. He wants each government to analyse the barriers in their own countries and make the appropriate changes to overcome obstacles to enhanced business-education cooperation.
The Czechs don’t plan to pass any new legislature to promote entrepreneurship, but rather reduce the amount of bureaucratic red tape that is already hindering business owners. Now that makes sense!
Continue reading ‘The Czechs are taking over - and they mean business’
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’
There is an enormous willingness from state policy makers to boost research and development activity in various countries of the Centrope region. The question is does this work?
Facts: in Hungary the R&D spending is app. 1% of the GPD. 90% of the spending comes from the public sector. The number of scientific researchers is extremely low, and brain drain has accelerated in recent years. The percentage of small- and medium sized enterprises is low, meanwhile their research budget is also insignificant. The percentage of graduates in real sciences is less than 8% of total graduates.
Continue reading ‘R&D – no impact of public money?’
We are still in the early phase of our publishing effort here at nowEurope connected with the Centrope ICT transfer project and keep identifying the main issues and common interests in our region of the Central Europe.
Technology transfer is a term widely used but it is often understood in quite different ways. Some people even take it just as another buzzword and so let’s take a closer look what it represents for us. For you. What are the topics or concrete questions interesting you and us the most?
Continue reading ‘What technology transfer questions interest you most?’
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’
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’
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!’
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