Tag Archive for 'Hungary'

Central Europe can bring talent back home

Published
by
Balazs Barta
  on  November 19, 2008
  in  Business innovation, Facts, figures & trends and Hungary
. 0 Comments

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.

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Why isn’t this a Hungarian, Czech, Slovak or Austrian university?

Published
by
Steven Carlson
  on  November 11, 2008
  in  Business innovation, Current events, Hungary and Innovation policy
. 0 Comments

My fellow nowEurope contributor, Guenther Krumpak, recently pointed out that European universities consistently rank at the bottom of the Times Higher Education Supplement university rankings. Geunther suggested a possible Anglo Saxon bias in the list. Perhaps. It would depend on the methodology.

What I’d like to know is how well are European universities keeping relevant with important commercial trends. I read today that Stanford University has a launched a new course to train iPhone developers. Wired’s Gadget Lab reports that worldwide demand for iPhone developers has jumped 500% in the last six months.

Can you imagine a Centrope university that responds so swiftly to market demand?

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Survey on skills and training needs of European cluster managers

Published
by
Zuzana Lettner
  on  October 3, 2008
  in  About CITT, Austria, Czech Republic, EU funding programmes, Hungary, Innovation policy and Slovakia
. 0 Comments

the CEE-ClusterNetwork is one of several initiatives concerning cluster development within Europe, an FP6 project focused mainly on future innovation and cluster policy. One aim is also the mobilisation and support of regional innovation policy actors to carry out and design co-operation activities together with other competent public authorities.

Thus, certain correlation with the CITT project is clearly visible. Another connection is the geographical focus, as the consortium of Central and Eastern Europe cover parts of Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland and Italy.

I participated at the cross-border workshop for cluster managers of this project in Vienna in September last year. During this interesting meeting I had the possibilities to get familiar with the project and for example participate at the brain storming sessions on project ideas, such as for example cluster academy, strategy for twin cluster, joint marketing activities related to cluster building.

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Brain drain – is it useful, at the end of the day?

Published
by
Balazs Barta
  on  September 4, 2008
  in  Facts, figures & trends and Hungary
. 2 Comments

As described in earlier articles, brain drain exists, and it has a significant impact on local economies. There has been recently a detailed analysis on how to counter-act this phenomenon, or how to make use of it.

Basically, there are three ways to counteract brain drain: 1) Creating administrative barriers against migration 2) Charging emigrants for their direct cost to the state (e.g. cost of education) 3. Engaging with the diaspora, by building interactive and strong communication links with the migrants – e.g. invitations to conferences, shared research activity.

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Brain Drain: The Austrians have suffered and learned

Published
by
Guenther Krumpak
  on  August 29, 2008
  in  Austria
. 1 Comment

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”.

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R&D – no impact of public money?

Published
by
Balazs Barta
  on  August 28, 2008
  in  Hungary and Innovation policy
. 5 Comments

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.

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Godzi is a refreshing idea but will people use it?

Published
by
Steven Carlson
  on  June 24, 2008
  in  Business innovation, Case studies and Hungary
. 0 Comments

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.

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CITT: Add “Technology Transfer” to Europe’s vocabulary!

Published
by
Guenther Krumpak
  on  May 7, 2008
  in  About CITT, Austria, Czech Republic, EU funding programmes, Hungary and Slovakia
. 0 Comments

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.

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Observations on Framework 6 in Hungary

Published
by
Steven Carlson
  on  January 14, 2005
  in  EU funding programmes
. 0 Comments

The goal of NETIES is to help small technology businesses (SMEs) get started with Framework 6 (FP6, and part of that mission, we’re working to identify barriers to participation.

The business people I bring together at my First Tuesday events here in Budapest are well aware of European Commission funding, but have little idea how to get started. Those who have describe a steep learning curve.

One First Tuesday attendee told me he had been approached by a Greek company to take part in an EU tender. The problem, he explained, is he doesn’t know this company and the relationship is open ended. Applying for the grant is an investment of time, but the return is unclear.

Others are baffled by the language of the European Commission, which includes calls, instruments, specific support actions, networks of excellence, and acronyms such as IST, EVA, FP6 and SME. (I found a useful FP6 glossary here.)

At my December First Tuesday event, we spent a good 45 minutes discussing step by step how FP6 works. Many people simply didn’t understand why the European Commission is offering money, and what they would be expected to deliver.

I was particularly pleased to have at my event, Dorottya Pék and her colleague Barbara from Care Consulting, who make a business of helping businesses apply for these grants. Dorottya was able to explain more of the specifics of the current calls published on Cordis.

As it turns out, there’s a whole network of people and institutions here in Hungary that provide information, training and consulting to businesses wishing to take part in FP6 and I’ll introduce some of these actors in future posts to nowEurope.