Issue N° 114 - October 2013
Keep up to date on innovation matters worldwide with the INSME Association!
Dear INSMEnews Readers,
on my last business trip to India I asked my Indian plane-neighbour to give me an inspiring quote on innovation related to his country.
His answer was "What India is thinking today, the World will think tomorrow".
I leave this to you together with this picture for further food of thought.
I took some very important impressions and lessons learned back to Europe and could strengthen existing contacts with our Indian members as well as explore new opportunities and partnerships to further extend the knowledge and expertise of our network.
The INSME community is continuing to grow rapidly. We welcome new members every month and our 10th INSME Annual Meeting on "Investing in Innovation" at Abu Dhabi in Spring will be a further milestone in the success story of our Association.
And now - as usual - enjoy your reading!
Ms. Christin Pfeiffer
INSME Secretary General
The INSME Team welcomes your comments and inputs for further improvement of this service.
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INSME is delighted to welcome a new Observer Member joining the Network in October!
Telekom Malaysia - TM is the leading integrated telecommunications company in Malaysia offering a comprehensive range of communication services and solutions in broadband, data and fixed-line. TM aims at propelling Malaysia as a regional Internet hub and digital gateway for South-East Asia and delivering an enhanced and integrated digital lifestyle to all Malaysians by opening up possibilities through connection, communication and collaboration.
Learn more about Telekom Malaysia here.
The INSME Association currently includes 95 members coming from 43 different countries from 4 continents.
INSME Secretary General, Ms. Pfeiffer, has been nominated a member of the Innovation in SMEs’ Advisory Group that recently met in Brussels for the first time to provide consistent and consolidated advice to the European Commission services during the preparation of the Horizon 2020 work programme. In particular the Advisory Group aims at advising on how to better involve SMEs in EU research and innovation support also by taking societal challenges and emerging needs into account.
Since its establishment in 2004 INSME has been granted the OECD moral sponsorship. This year the OECD renewed its interest in supporting the network activities emphasizing that the mission and actual role of INSME are perfectly in line with some of the main policy recommendations of the OECD Working Party on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and Entrepreneurship. Therefore INSME President together with INSME Secretary General actively intervened at the OECD SME Working Party Meeting just taken place from the 21st to the 23rd of October 2013 in Paris, by presenting INSME’s Action Plan for 2013-2014 and stressing the increasing collaboration potential with a view to reinforcing synergies for mutual benefits for both organizations.
In this article Dr. dos Santos & Mr. Keske Cassemiro from SEBRAE (INSME Board Member) provide us with insights from their experience with Business Linkages Projects. This term was forged to define cooperative, long-term and mutually attractive relationships, established among large and small companies of the value chain aimed at improving competitiveness of both companies and the value chain as a whole. SEBRAE’s project grounds on the awareness that companies, despite their size, face diverse challenges of competitiveness before increasing demanding markets and strong and efficient corporate constellations. To overcome these challenges both large and small companies realized that they need to act complementarily.
Read the whole article here.
The African Development Bank Group (INSME Member) recently approved an equity investment of up to 15 Million US $ to the Enko Africa Private Equity Fund (EAPEF) to invest in mid-size companies registered in Africa in health, education, agri-business, financial services, retail and infrastructure sectors. The Fund intends to add value to investee companies by injecting financial resources to enable expansion, recapitalization, and deleveraging; but also to bring expertise in strengthening corporate governance and improving business practices and standards of disclosure in preparing companies for stock market listing.
Read more about the Enko Africa Private Equity Fund here.
On the 13th of September 2013, the Federal Council decided to grant Vietnam a general budget support of 24 Million CHF for 2013 to 2015. In particular the initiative aims at reinforcing measures that contribute to a stable macro-economic environment, a transparent and efficient public financial management, and an improved business environment. The budget support forms part of the instruments implemented by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs - SECO (INSME Member) to put the framework credit on financing economic and trade policy measures in force and is made in the form of co-financing through a World Bank trust fund, together with six other donors.
Learn more about this initiative here.
The European Commission recently launched the "Indicator of Innovation Output" to quantify the extent to which ideas for new products and services from innovative sectors, carry an economic added value and are able to reach the market, providing better jobs and making Europe more competitive. The novelty of the proposed indicator is that it focuses on innovation output by taking four main components into consideration: technological innovation; employment in knowledge-intensive activities; competitiveness of knowledge-intensive goods and services and employment in fast-growing firms of innovative sectors. According to the new indicator EU is performing well in comparison with non-EU countries, with Switzerland taking the lead on innovation output.
Read more about the new innovation indicator here.
On the 20th of September 2013 Ministers from Australia, Korea, New Zealand and Singapore signed a Statement of Intent on the establishment of the Asia Region Funds Passport aiming at integrating financial markets in the APEC region. In particular the initiative intends to facilitate the ability of eligible collective investment schemes in Passport Members Economies to be offered in other Passport Member Economies in accordance to the Passport arrangements. In order to be eligible, the collective investment scheme must be constituted and authorized, approved, registered or licensed in a Passport Member Economy and have met the regulatory requirements to offer the interests in the collective investment scheme to the public.
Learn more about the initiative and how to become a Passport Member Economy here.
Might the power of the negative be the best way to drive innovative thinking? In this article Scott Bowden from IBM explores three new approaches to innovation that could be enhanced through negative thinking, these are: focusing on the negative path; receiving negative feedback and the rhetorical power of the negative.
Read the article here.
Coming up with innovative and successful ideas is not an easy task. James Caan in this article wonders if there is a formula for generating entrepreneurial ideas providing entrepreneurs with some steps that might help them to find their eureka moment.
Read the article here.
In Part I of this two-part series China IPR Helpdesk described essential contractual provisions to be included to protect company’s business operations in contracts with third parties. To complete the picture Part 2 of the article outlines the benefits of Non-Disclosure Agreements in order to prevent any third party to unveil confidential information and shows provisions to be clearly expressed in employment contracts regarding confidentiality, IPR ownership, non-compete and non-solicitation to avoid future disputes and material damages to your business’ operations.
Read the article here.
The European Commission launched a new call for proposal, EU-Future Internet 2013 with the aim of generating new knowledge, including new technology or common resources for research, in order to improve European competitiveness or to address major societal needs. Potential eligible projects should have clearly defined scientific and technological objectives directed at obtaining specific results, which could be applicable in terms of development or improvement of products, processes, services or policy. As such, they may also be targeted to special groups, such as SMEs.
The EU contribution is between 4 and 25 Million € and the deadline is fixed on the 10th of December 2013.
More information at this page.
The National Science Foundation (USA) recently launched the Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation CapacityProgramme aimed at supporting long-lasting academy-industry partnership to collaborate in building technological capacity and developing an innovation-oriented human capital. To achieve this goal the partnership must develop new technology applied to service systems to enter the commercialization process, succeed in the marketplace and achieve positive economic/social impact. Proposals may only be submitted by U.S. universities and two-and four-year colleges (including community and technical colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in the U.S., acting on behalf of their faculty members.
The deadline for submission is the 27th of January 2014.
Read more and download the application package here.
The IOR-ARC Regional Centre for Science and Technology Transfer (INSME Member) based in Iran invites scientists from all over the world to submit their candidature to the 27th Khwarizmi International Award, that will be held during the first week of February 2014. The Award aims at recognizing outstanding scientific achievements made by researchers, inventors and innovators in twelve different fields in the realms of engineering, basic and social sciences and agriculture.
The deadline for submitting the abstract is the 10th of November 2013.
Read more about the Award here.
Download the call for participation here.
Start-up Chile is a program created by the Government of Chile aiming at attracting early stage high potential entrepreneurs to strengthen the entrepreneurship eco-system and position Chile as the leading innovation and entrepreneurial hub of Latin America. Eligible participants must be Chilean or foreign natural persons over eighteen years of age who are the founders or owners of a global project to be implemented using Chile as a platform. The program assigns a 40.000 US $ grant per project (20,000,000 CLP $) and a 1-year resident visa to all team members specified on the application. Each year the program opens three application rounds and 100 teams are selected per round. Projects may not consist of exportation and importation of products, consulting services and franchises, as these are not considered to be highly scalable projects with high growth potential. Likewise, projects must be in early stages of development, understanding these to be projects with less than two years of development.
Find out more about the 2014 applications rounds at the following page.
The Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014 gives remarkable insights on the competitiveness environment of 148 economies providing a general understanding of the key factors that drive economic growth. According to the report those are: excellent innovation, institutional environments and an increasing awareness towards concepts such as social and environmental sustainability. In addition the report contains detailed country profiles and an extensive section of global rankings covering over 100 different indicators. In particular, it is worth noting that the report’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) places Switzerland at the top of the ranking, followed by Singapore and Finland.
Get the whole report here.
The new OECD, WTO and UNCTAD report intends to assess the impact of Global Value Chaines (GVCs) on trade, investment, development, growth and jobs. The analysis states that GVCs are the consequence of and depend upon open markets and need to be complemented with appropriate policy frameworks including the strengthening of productive capacities. One of the key challenges is to address obstacles to such participation from developing economies. According to the report to reap the benefits from effective Global Value Chains participation further investment in technology dissemination, skill building and upgrading is required from all countries.
Read the report here.
The study is a joint initiative carried out by the European Patent Office - EPO and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market - OHIM aiming at quantifying the overall contribution made by IPR - intensive industries to the EU Economy in terms of output, employment, wages and trade, by taking a wide range of IP rights (patents, trade-marks, designs, copyrights and geographical indications) into account. The most striking finding is that IPR intensive industries generate more than a quarter of current employment and more than a third of economic activity in the EU.
Read the whole analysis here.
Open Education Europa is a new dynamic platform launched as part of the Opening Up Education Initiative with the aim to provide access to all existing European Open Educational Resources in different languages in order to be able to present them to learners, teachers and researchers. The platform built with the latest cutting-edge open-source technology, is divided in three main sections:
Learn more about the portal here.
The University - Industry Innovation Management Magazine is published bi-annually and aims at contributing to the development and improvement of industry-academy relationships by keeping the readers informed on the activities in the area of university-industry interaction. The editors also welcome ideas for special issues of the magazine on a specific topic or theme.
The last issue of the UIIM Magazine was published in Spring/Summer 2013.
Subscribe here to read the next issue of the UIIM Magazine.
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12th -13th of November 2013 The 35th edition of the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship ISBE Annual Conference (INSME Member) will take place on the 12th and 13th of November 2013 in Cardiff, United Kingdom to discuss the vital role of entrepreneurship and small business in the current economic environment. The event will connect policy makers with business support practitioners and academics with the aim of stimulating productive dialogue and engagement between participants. In particular the conference will be an opportunity to share new entrepreneurial perspectives, exchange best practices and create the ground for the establishment of future business relationships.
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The 7th edition of the Mediterrean Economic Week will take place from the 6th to the 9th of November 2013 in Marseille, France, and is organized by the ANIMA Investment Network (INSME Member), the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur Region, the City of Marseille, the Marseille Provence Métropole Urban Community, the Euroméditerranée Urban Development Agency and the Marseille Provence Chamber of Commerce. This edition aims at providing a place for discussions and debates on the economic development of the MENA region by bringing together actors from various backgrounds among which entrepreneurs, researchers, politicians, economists, students, experts, and civil society actors. In particular the 7th edition will focus on the role of culture as a driver of economic development in the Mediterranean region.
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29th of October - 1st of November 2013
2nd World Forum of Local Economic Development
Organized by UNDP and SEBRAE (INSME Board Member)
Foz do Iguassu, Paraná, Brazil
4th - 6th of November 2013
10th Annual Conference on Innovation Based Regional Development
Organized by the The Technopolicy Network and King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology (KACST)
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
11th - 13th of November 2013
19th SETAC LCA Case Study Symposium
Organized by SETAC and ISIE
Rome, Italy
12th - 14th of November 2013
World Innovation Exhibition & Forum 2013
Organized by the Yayasan Inovasi Malaysia (YIM) and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Malaysia
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
25th - 26th of November 2013
Global Islamic Economy Summit 2013 - Leading a New Economic Paradigm
Organized by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry and Thomson Reuters
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
25th - 28th of November 2013
AFRICOMM 2013, Fifth International IEEE EAI Conference on e‐Infrastructure and e‐Services for Developing Countries
Organized by EAI - European Alliance for Innovation
Blantyre, Malawi
27th - 28th of November 2013
Seminar on High Performance Leadership
Organized by UNITAR
Geneva, Switzerland
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6th - 9th of November 2013
