Editorial

Editorial – Research, technology & innovation in CENTROPE

With an enormous density of universities, research facilities and technology-oriented companies, cross-border co-operation in science and innovation is destined to become one of the top hallmarks of the Central European Region.

The heights to which innovative entrepreneurship in high-tech sectors can lead CENTROPE is exemplified by the successful participation of CENTROPE companies in the Eurecan European Venture Contest. From a qualifying round in the context of the Cleantech Invest Event in September 2010, three enterprises from the region emerged to compete among the most promising young European green technology businesses. One of them, the producer of a completely new photovoltaic module, even made it into the top 25. That clean technologies have the potential to become a future growth engine in CENTROPE is also testified by Eduard Stefan Buzetzki. This Austrian scientist currently working at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava is typical of researchers whose career combines the best of the various scientific worlds that come together in CENTROPE.

When calling for intensified cross-border research co-operation and regional support structures, Buzetzki echoes the findings of an analysis of CENTROPE’s participation in the 7^th EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. While the region’s research institutions are successfully and frequently involved in collaborative projects with scientific partners across Europe, only a comparatively small number of projects engage researchers from various CENTROPE countries simultaneously. This underutilised potential is a call for action, given that there are no less than 5,000 companies, 60 research institutions and 36,000 researchers located within CENTROPE in the ICT sector alone. One but definitely not the last occasion for establishing new contacts and setting up new cross-border networks will be the B2B Software Days to take place in Vienna in March 2011.

A very concrete step towards building a CENTROPE Knowledge Region was taken in 2009 by establishing the technology transfer network project centrope_tt, which brings together 15 partners – ranging from universities and innovation centres to business agencies, regional development bodies and chambers of commerce – under the leadership of ecoplus, the business agency of Lower Austria. Financed by the Central Europe Programme, its twofold objective lies in creating faster access to research within CENTROPE for enterprises and offering financial support for international co-operation between business and research. An interactive R&D contact database, a new financing tool for co-operation between business and science – the centrope_tt voucher – and a training programme for intermediate experts from the field of technology transfer are core elements of the project.

Today, looking back at about eighteen months of co-operation, the centrope_tt community has become a learning community on day-to-day matters in the field of technology transfer and an attractive framework for “training on the job” as well as for lively interaction among partners who did not know each other only two years ago. The tt_voucher has proven wildly popular among enterprises of the region and exceeds all expectations. With its focus on technology transfer, centrope_tt brings leverage to bear on the nexus between research and innovative entrepreneurship – an interrelationship identified as crucial in an exemplary study on the regional innovation system in South Moravia as well.

Your CENTROPE Agency Team