nowEurope

Along with the increasing popularity of the technology debate in Austria during the last years and after numerous discussions with ICT researchers in the Centrope countries I realised that there is a striking resemblance in their complaints, although the statements themselves express the respective opposite. See also http://noweurope.com/2009/09/08/barriers-cooperation/#more-1293 by Vlastimil.

Simply speaking, the Austrians complain that there’s not enough money for basic research as all goes to applied research, whereas the Czech and Slovak Republics as well as Hungary (representing the situation in virtually all new EU member states and beyond) complain that universities concentrate too much on basic research and do not understand the importance of applied research. Continue reading ‘Basic vs. applied research: Potentials unused?’

Comment on Robert Nemeth’s question “Can Centrope profit from the Chinese recovery?“ below.

China has been impressing analysts and and the rest of the world  since the start of its economic redirection almost 30 years ago. But there have always been warning voices, on malevolent copyright and technology theft on one hand, on bubble based growth on the other.

I have always been in favour of stronger links between Europe and China – simply for strategic reasons: Of the three (or maybe four, including India) superpowers China is Europe’s best choice, despite neglecting human rights etc. (The others are not better in this respect.) Continue reading ‘China: Yes, but carefully’

This somewhat confusing headline should be the shortcut of an answer to the previous two posts by Christoph and Steven. My point is, both posts are right, but they do not entirely see the whole picture.

There’s no question that that Silicon Valley is certainly the archetype of a cluster, as well as that CITT should rather focus on its offerings than on its structural details.

But: the question is how to offer and execute sales, funding, opportunities for technology transfer etc.

1) out of, or for a network,
2) on a cross border level and
3) mainly for SMEs.

And: How can this model on the long run be transferred to other regions of Europe.
Continue reading ‘Cluster yes, network yes, sales yes, funding yes’

IST Austria www.ist-austria.ac.at, Austria’s new center for excellence in research, has been a controversy for years. One of its original proponents, Anton Zeilinger, one of the world’s top researchers in quantum computing, has withdrawn from the project when it became clear that politics started to dominate the debate and “excellence” was abused as a euphemism for “I want some new research stuff in my province”.

Continue reading ‘IST Austria opened: „Excellent“ topping on research coffee?’

In the framework of the Czech Republic’s EU presidency Masaryk University in Brno, CITT partner First Innovation Park and others organised an EU project information and brokerage event on April 30, 2009, where I had the honour and pleasure to speak. The hall was full, people interested and attentive. Allow me therefore this time to comment myself.

Originally I planned to talk about chances and risks in R&D and EU activities in Central Europe, but facing the present economic situation I thought I should rather offer general information on what is happening in the ICT markets in the region. Continue reading ‘ICT Brokerage Brno: ICT better off than other industries’

Recently Ivo Spigel (Welcome!) opened one of his posts stating “We’re all used to the fact that most trends, paradigm shifts and business model disruptions originate in the US, and then, sometimes quickly and sometimes more slowly, make their way across the Atlantic, first to Western and then gradually to Central and Eastern Europe.”

This made me think. Not that I wasn’t aware of it, on the contrary. All those EU-sceptics should have a look at a world map – the US, China, Russia dominate it, and then there’s Europe with its pretty little gardens, well fenced in, enormously self confident when it comes to questions about “sovereignty” and stuff. When it comes to global questions, though, there’s a lot of hot air, but rarely solutions.

Anyway, that’s not my topic. My topic is Ivo’s introduction: “We’re all used to the fact…”. Although the paradigms have changed slightly (GSM came from Europe, etc), our minds are programmed to accept and adopt anything that’s labelled as “glamorous” from across the Atlantic.

Continue reading ‘Against the windmills In Europe’s minds’

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’