Is there a field where the exchange between science and economy really works well? At events or in presentations people often praise the excellent cooperation between companies, universities and research institutions. Often technology parks are built with together with institutes of higher education or universities as this makes a good impression and seems to be promising, but in fact this is rarely the case.
I think that on closer inspection the exchange between science and economy turns out to be rather poor. Of course, there are some exceptions with respect to big enterprises. But in most cases, the only cooperation is hiring already educated students. So it would be reasonable to “force” SMEs to really cooperate. The only question is how to do so and how an increase in innovation can be achieved.
Continue reading ‘Does a successful exchange between science and economy exist?’
In Vienna, ICT enterprises benefit from numerous location factors, especially with respect to the work of service providing companies and universities but also clients, contractors and competitors.
An analysis of the innovation processes of the enterprises shows that they strongly focus on development and introduction on the market. It is less important for companies to permanently carry out research activities themselves. This lack of science activity strongly influences their innovation power: more often enterprises try to improve already existing products than concentrating on a completely different innovation process.
The main obstacles within innovation processes are high costs, economic risk and a lack of financial aid.
Continue reading ‘Innovation and knowledge exchange in Vienna’
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’
Today I would like to present you one Viennese research institution and one company (Competence Center) successfully involved in R&D-activities. Both of them are quite important for our city.
These two organizations have an excellent international reputation and both of them are running successful cross-border projects and have finalized some very interesting ones in the past.
Continue reading ‘Vienna, Austria – A Spot of Excellence’
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’
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 very glad to have the opportunity to be a nowEurope contributer. With my first article I would like to greet and welcome all readers of this page warmly.
The Brussels office of the Vienna Business Agency (VBA) and VITE organised from the 16th to the 18th of April 2008 a business trip to Brussels and Leuven for IT enterprises from Austria and the CENTROPE region. Continue reading ‘Review: Vienna IT Enterprises (VITE) trip to Belgium 16th-18th of April, 2008′
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