Issue N° 119 - March 2014
Keep up to date on innovation matters worldwide with the INSME Association!
Dear INSMEnews Readers,
Back from a successful 10th INSME Annual Meeting,
I leave you with a first impression of what successful networking
and get together looked like!
“Coming together is a beginning;
keeping together is progress;
working together is success.”
(Henry Ford)
It was a pleasure and a privilege being with you and I renew my deep gratitude to Khalifa Fund for having hosted the 10th Anniversary of the INSME Network with such warm hospitality, high professionalism and excellent networking opportunities.
INSME can currently count on 103 members from 46 different countries and is growing steadily.
Let’s keep strong, as I believe that working together in a sincerely committed way is a synonym for “Success”!
...and now as usual enjoy your reading!
Ms. Christin Pfeiffer
INSME Secretary General
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The 10th INSME Annual Meeting on “Investing in Innovation: Building a Sustainable Knowledge-based Economy” has just taken place from the 18th to the 20th of March 2014 at Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates co-organized by Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development (INSME Vice President). This year’s event coinciding with the 10th Anniversary of the INSME Association, was highly appreciated both by local experts and international delegates attracting more than 500 participants from 35 different countries. Thanks to the special contributions of outstanding speakers from the Virgin Unite Mentors, the OECD, Google and Skype, high attendance and plenty of networking opportunities, the 10th INSME Annual Meeting represents a further milestone in the INSME success story.
The INSME - Khalifa Fund International Training was met with great approval as well and raised a lot of interest by touching state-of-the-art topics such as “Sustainability, Innovation and Design”, “Commercialization of Research” and “Tricks and Tips on Creative Communication”.
Thanks to the outstanding hospitality of Khalifa Fund the 10th INSME Annual Meeting was not only the place to achieve professional goals, but also a moment to celebrate and discuss new trends and collaboration potential. The INSME Secretariat thanks all who came along for your interest and support! Keep an eye on the next year’s annual meeting taking place in South Africa and co-organized by OSIBA Management (INSME Board Member).
Further information about the 10th INSME Annual Meeting are available on the official dedicated website.
The photo gallery will be available soon.
This month the INSME Association is proud to celebrate the 1st Anniversary of the INSMEAcademy, a webinar-based training program on relevant topics concerning Innovation, Creativity, Strategic Partnerships and Entrepreneurial Spirit.
Each month experts in field of innovation from all over the world, log into the platform to deepen their knowledge, discuss and benefit from the outstanding contributions of world class professionals coming from different innovation-related backgrounds.
The INSMEAcademy managed to gather more than 610 registered participants from 78 different countries so far and covered topics such as “How to Drive Innovation with regard to Sustainability”, “The New Entrepreneurial Revolution”, “Entrepreneurship: an Emirati Perspective” and “How Small Businesses Can Embrace Crowdfunding for Success”.
The didactic calendar for the upcoming sessions is available at the following link. In the next future special contributions from Innovation Business Development and the World Intellectual Property Organization - WIPO (INSME Members) are on the agenda
Join us to learn, share and master during the upcoming sessions by sending an email to academy@insme.it.
INSME is delighted to welcome three new members joining the network in March!
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INDIA SME Forum is a non-profit initiative formed to propel the SME movement by nurturing entrepreneurship. INDIA SME Forum’s initiative aims at fostering the development of a flourishing entrepreneurial culture and a competitive SMEs sector to support economic development. The core strategies to bring this about include listening, sharing and advocating for a pro-business environment and identifying, enabling and seeding innovative start-ups and recognizing, grooming and supporting, promising SMEs.
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The Qatar Development Bank (QDB) is a financial entity fully owned by the government, set up by an Emiri Decree to invest in and develop local industries by supporting small and medium enterprises in Qatar. QDB aligned its strategy to correspond with the Qatar National Vision for the year 2030, to promote and facilitate development and growth of small and medium enterprises in core economic realms, resulting with long-term socioeconomic benefits to the people of Qatar. In addition to providing financial aid, the bank also offers advisory support and guidance to small and medium enterprises regarding start up, growth and expansion of their activities, aiming to establish a sustainable economic system.
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Micro Automation Industries (MAI), based in Dubai, U.A.E, provides a wide range of cost effective, microprocessor embedded solutions, to the consumer and industrial engineering community. With history from 1977 and accumulated expertise in the field of engineering design, development, prototyping and manufacturing, MAI has carved a niche of its own as the best in the field of power protection. The credit for its success owes itself to the strict quality standards and the utmost care taken to exceed customer expectations.
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The INSME Association can count on the support of 103 Members coming from 46 different countries.
The Dubai Entrepreneurship Academy is an initiative launched by Dubai SME (INSME Member) with the objective to provide aspiring entrepreneurs with the skills and knowledge they need to become future business leaders.
The Academy offers different training programs such as Entrepreneurship Diploma or How to attract funds and grow your business in order to:
More information available at the following webpage.
In the publication on “National Intellectual Property Systems, Innovation and Economic Development with perspectives on Colombia and Indonesia“, OECD experts analyze the role of national IP systems in the socio-economic development of emerging countries, by considering them as a policy area of potentially significant impact on innovation. The publication states that in a development context potential innovators face multiple challenges that shape the impacts IP systems can have on innovation.
These include substantial heterogeneities in productive sectors. In other words a few “islands of excellence”, such as leading innovative firms, universities and/or sectors, co-exist with an often-substantial informal sector and a large number of firms with low innovation capacities. In order to support innovation, it is important that all groups have opportunities to effectively benefit from the national IP system.
The publication includes two case studies on Colombia and Indonesia providing policy recommendations to the National IP Systems of both countries.
Read the full publication here.
Captain Planet is a foundation with the objective to support and encourage innovative initiatives that inspire and empower children and youth around the world to work individually and collectively creating environmental solutions in their homes, schools and communities.
The Foundation is currently supporting Kenyan youth by fundraising an idea which would make life for the community they live in better and healthier.
In particular a group of Kenyan girls identified two problems in their community. The first problem is that existing stoves use coal and wood which are expensive and not a sustainable fuel. The second is that people have no use for rice husks, so they pile up on the sides of roads and in towns creating a very unsightly nuisance. The solution they came up with consists of a cook stove that can use rice husks efficiently for cooking and heating. Not only this deals with the issue of deforestation which is impacting Africa, it also provides a much cleaner and safer fuel for burning, producing less carbon and pollution while eliminating a waste product.
Learn more about this and other projects supported by Captain Planet here.
The EU Gateway is a European Commission programme which organises and funds Business Missions in high technology and design sectors for European SMEs to develop their business in Japan and Korea. Participating companies benefit from an attractive package of coaching, strategic and logistical services as well as financial support. From March 2014, EU Gateway puts on a new hat and heads to South East Asia.
This EU-funded initiative is being piloted to Singapore-Malaysia and Singapore-Vietnam aiming to create EU business avenues in the region. The programme provides logistic, strategic and financial support to European SMEs who are willing to strengthen their presence in South East Asia by helping them to establish contacts with local companies. In particular three missions will be organized during 2014-2015 which will focus on two sectors, Clean Technologies and Interior Design.
More information available on the official website or by contacting the Local Cluster Coordinators.
In this article published on Business News Daily Nicole Fallon deals with the idea of intrapreneurship as a way to create a company culture that inspires creativity.
In Phil Shave’s opinion - co-founder and co-CEO of TransPerfect- “intrapreneurship is when employees have an entrepreneurial spirit internally” and he offers four tips for fostering intrapreneurship in the workplace:
Read the full article here.
The article analyses how and if innovation is a threat to employment in Latin America.
In particular on the one hand economists state that technological change could create unemployment through the substitution of capital for labor, on the other hand innovation may result in higher productivity, lower prices and higher demand which will eventually create new jobs.
Therefore the final effects of innovation on employment depend on the balance between substitution and compensation effects.
Read the full article here.
The article offers an overview on what copyright is by outlining what can be protected as copyright and why taking care to do so can prove beneficial to the business in China.
Copyright may be considered both as an important part of IP protection strategy and as a supplementary tool to enforce alongside other IP rights, such as design patents or trademarks. Voluntary registration is available and highly recommended in China as it will provide proof of ownership, which can save SME time and money in case of a dispute later on.
Find out more here.
The European Commission is looking for highly innovative, ambitious and passionate small and medium sized enterprises to invest in and support as part of the SME instrument.
The instrument is organized in three phases with the aim of transforming disruptive ideas into concrete, innovative solutions with a European and global impact. Companies can receive up to € 3 million in funding, and world-class business support and mentorship.
SMEs are recommended to apply for Phase 1, but may also apply for subsequent phases depending on the progress of their proposals:
Further information are available here.
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology - EIT recently launched the 2014 call for Knowledge and Innovation Communities proposal. A KIC is a highly autonomous partnership of top-class higher education institutions, research organizations, companies and other stakeholders in the innovation process that tackles societal challenges through the development of products, services and processes and that nurtures innovative entrepreneurial people. A KIC’s portfolio of activities typically includes: entrepreneurial education and training programmes, research and innovation projects and incubation of and support to start-ups and ventures.
This year, two new KICs will be selected which address the thematic fields of:
To be eligible at least two thirds of the partner organizations forming the proposed KIC are established in the Member States. In addition the partnership must include at least one higher education institution as well as one private company.
The deadline for submitting proposals is the 10th of September 2014.
Read more about the call here.
The ISPIM Americas Innovation Forum 2014 will be held in Montreal, Canada from the 5th to the 8th of October 2014. Organised by ISPIM (INSME Member), in collaboration with Université de Montréal, Polytechnique Montréal, HEC Montréal and Univalor, this event will bring together around 200 innovation experts from 25 countries.
Submissions from academic, research, consulting, industry, intermediary and policy organisations are encouraged and should focus on the following themes:
All files must be submitted online at www.conferencesubmissions.com/ispimmontreal.
Only one submission and one presentation per person is permitted.
The deadline for submissions is the 16th of June 2014.
Further information are available here.
TrakInvest.com is the world's first virtual social investment platform for equities, built on a learn-share-earn model. The platform combines social media and compensation-incentive based investing into a simple user interface. The portal provides contextualized information based on query including news, twitter feeds and related stocks. The platform also generates weekly updated research and analytics reports in partnerships with Thomson Reuters for over 12,000 companies listed on US, India, China, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong stock exchanges to its users (learn model).
Once collected these information, TrakInvest provides its user base with a simple and unique platform to communicate and share trading activity on a real time basis and the chance to track top performers in the stock and sectors that most interest them (share model). Top performers get the benefit to participate in monthly competitions and have the ability to not only win cash and sponsored prizes, but more importantly internships and job opportunities (earn model).
Learn more about the initiative here.
The European Commission recently released the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2014 which provides a comparative assessment of the research and innovation performance of the EU Member States and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their research and innovation systems.
According to the scoreboard the EU and all EU Member States have become more innovative in recent years. As a result, the EU has closed half of the innovation gap towards the US. However, the differences in the innovation performance within the EU are still very high and diminish only slowly. The overall ranking within the EU remains relatively stable, with Sweden, followed by Denmark, Germany and Finland recognized as Innovation Leaders. Portugal, Estonia and Latvia are the innovation growth leaders being the countries that have most improved over the last years.
Most progress has been made in the openness and attractiveness of the EU research system as well as business innovation collaboration and the commercialisation of knowledge as measured by license and patent revenues from abroad. However, the growth of public R&D expenditures over the last years was offset by a continuous decline in venture capital investments and non-R&D innovation investments in companies.
Read the Innovation Union Scoreboard here.
The European Parliament recently issued a report on “Mapping Smart Cities in the EU” with the aim of providing background information and advice to their members on Smart Cities in the EU and to explain how existing mechanisms perform, in particular vis-à-vis the targets of EU 2020.
In this report, a Smart City is one with at least one initiative addressing one or more of the following six characteristics: Smart Governance, Smart People, Smart Living, Smart Mobility, Smart Economy and Smart Environment.
According to the report smart environment and smart mobility actions are the most common with 33% and 21% of all smart initiatives respectively. It has been proved that successful projects are those with inspiring city leaders, clear objectives, goals, targets and baseline measurement systems in place from the outset and those who tend to be embedded in a comprehensive city vision.
A key concern to the Commission is to identify solutions that are scalable. The report found that scalability/dissemination are more likely if both private companies and public authorities are involved in providing an institutional base for scaling. In addition cooperation among cities to create a common Smart City platform for large-scale development and testing would be highly recommended.
Read the whole report here.
This OECD Website allows comparison of OECD and G20 countries between them based on key indicators such as employment, development, education and economic projections.
Compare your country here.
The Network for Business Sustainability-NBS (INSME Member) is a Canadian non-profit that connects researchers and professionals worldwide who are interested in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and who believe in the value of research-based practice and practice-based research.
The NBS newsletter provides updates on the latest academic job opportunities, conferences and calls for proposals and biweekly updates on the latest research and practical insights for sustainability managers.
Subscribe to the newsletter here.
The International Entrepreneurs Investment Forum
The event is organized by the General Union of Arab Chambers and UNIDO (INSME Member) through the support of the Islamic Development Bank, the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa and INSME, among others. Due to current economic conditions, unemployment is one of the challenges that governments have to face. It has been proved that the answer to employment generation lies in the promotion of the private sector - notably the entrepreneur - through the promotion of investments, both foreign and domestic. Thus, the immediate objective for governments will have to focus on strengthening the existing entrepreneurs and developing the conditions for the creation of new enterprises. The Forum addresses entrepreneurs from all over the world in order to explore the possibilities of cooperation and joint investment potential. In particular the Forum aims at developing a platform for entrepreneurs to access and promote their investment opportunities, disseminate best practices from the cases of successful programs and tools and facilitate trade among them.
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9th - 10th of April 2014
The Middle East Investment Conference
Organized by the CFA Institute
Dead Sea, Jordan
9th - 11th of April 2014
Industrial Technologies 2014
Organized by FORTH/ICE - HT, Spinvers Ltd, Sev Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, LMS at the University of Patras, SYROS'Shipibuilding and Industrial Enterprise S.A., FRIGOGLASS, CNR ITIA, The Chamber of Achaia and ATHENA RIC
Athens, Greece
23rd - 25th of April 2014
2014 University-Industry Interaction Conference: Challenges and solutions for fostering entrepreneurial universities and collaborative innovation
Organized by University Industry Innovation Network (UIIN) and the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP)
Barcelona, Spain
2nd - 5th of May 2014
The 47th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors
Organized by the Asian Development Bank (INSME Member)
Astana, Kazakhstan
12th - 14th of May 2014
Technology Innovation International (TII) Annual Conference 2014
Organized by Technology Innovation International (TII) in collaboration with HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht
Utrecht, Netherlands
14th - 16th of May 2014
ASTP - Proton Annual Conference
Organized by ASTP - Association of European Science & Technology Transfer Professionals
Oslo, Norway
8th - 11th of June 2014
XXV ISPIM Innovation Conference
Organized by ISPIM (INSME Member)
Dublin, Ireland
11th - 12th of June 2014
International IP Enforcement Summit
Organized by the UK Intellectual Property Office, the European Commission and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market
London, United Kingdom
21st - 24th of June 2014
ESOF 2014 - Euroscience Open Forum
Organized by Euroscience
Copenaghen, Denmark
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The International Entrepreneurs Investment Forum on “Entrepreneurs’ Role in a Changing Business Environment”, will take place from the 21st to the 24th of April at Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain.
