Bucharest, June 18th 2019: Smart Spacialisation Strategies and Technology Transfer – and STM
During EU Council Bulgarian Presidency in 2018 was launched the concept of dialogue-platform in order to consider opportunities and challenges for Europe (notably South-Eastern Europe) in R&D, education, employment and innovation and to involve local stakeholders in designing comprehensive innovation strategies in order to achieve a coherent framework for prioritizing public investments.Thus, the „Sofia process“ begun by Joint Research Center (JRC) with the support of the EU commission is aimed to connect macro-regions (with strong emphasis on Balkans and SEE) through desinging policies and implementation practices for strategic innovation.
Conference report from its first deployment phase could be summarized in: agreeing on technology transfer as main enabling factor for innovation and challenges to apply its. Gaps could come from: a poor „dictionary“ for academia-business dialogue, mobilisation of public funds in this direction, building capacities for universities, technology transfer seen more as craft than a science, etc.
Smart specialization is more a result of complex factors from a certain environment which act independently from public policies. More than that, in some countries from Western Europe there is no smart specialization strategy. Awareness on concepts like technology transfer and necessity to use innovative technologies resulted more from the necessity to describe current processes within society.
Such priorities come with a long list with „do“ and „don`t“ with strong emphasis on involving stakeholders.
Steinbeis Transfer Management located in Romania, sister company for Steinbeis East-West Joint Ventures under the management of consultant Jurgen Raizner shared through participation its experiences in main subjects approached. From these, recently closed project European Early Innovators Initiative show that filling current gaps is possible by creating indirect awareness from the grassroots of education: early-school stage. Moreover, recently launched Erasmus + funded project “ifempower” enables entrepreneurial mindset module in Bologna system. EEII could be seen as a promising idea and valuable candidate for a Proof of Concept, enabling technology transfer process. PPP project plans involving university/school -business environment but also the pupil/student/researcher are already are already in the framework of European Early Innovators Program exist and need involvement of responsible institutions with education.
Subject will be deepened during YES! EUSDR side event of the 8th EUSDR Annual Forum organized by STM.
Event website of EC Science Hub