- Section 3:Training, Innovation
and Regional Development
Regional Systems of Innovation and the
Exchange of Knowledge: Evidence and Issues for Policies
P.P. Patrucco, K. Michoel
E-Learning for European Industry
M. Kelleher, A.Haldane, G.van Heijst
- Making
innovation exploitation a success business story: The IST DILEMMA
Project
V. Tsakalos, N. Melanitis, A. Constantinou, A. Koumpis, Z. Damianova,
A. Michaelides, L. Volle, T. Haug, A. Smeets
THINK BIG: Think Business, Innovation,
and Growth
I. Hussla, A. Thiemann
Design of a Web-Based Training System:
Focus on the Internet, E-Commerce & EDI
Y. Duan, R. Mullins, D. Hamblin
FifeDirect - using the Internet for regional
economic development and social inclusion
A. Lake
Multimedia Course in a Professional Target:
Electronic Commerce
M. Castro, A. Colmenar, C. De Mora, F. Yeves, J. Peire
Accelerating eCommerce in Europe through
networked regional and national Activities
A. Flottmann-Nilsson
Linking the Scandinavian countries and
Scotland through Information Technology: Best practice experiences
from the IT-Scand project
K. Davis, C. Richards
Innovation-Online: A Vortal for Supporting
Innovative SMEs within a Regional Economy
P. Anderson
PREMISE: Increasing European SMEs' Take-Up
of Electronic Commerce
L. Wittenberg
Support to Project Proposers under the
IST Programme
P. Drath, R. Pleger, R. Gagliardi, S. Muscella, A. Ceccarelli
Regional
Systems of Innovation and the Exchange of Knowledge: Evidence
and Issues for Policies
Pier Paolo PATRUCCO and Kristien MICHOEL
Nomisma - Società di Studi Economici S.p.A., Industrial
Policy Unit,
Strada Maggiore 44, 40125 Bologna, Italy
The Italian evidence of regional
systems of innovation illustrates very specific and highly differentiated
innovation patterns. In that agglomeration and proximity create
favourable conditions for low communication costs and knowledge
externalities, the presence of local clusters opens a wide range
of economic opportunities to enhance innovation and in turn economic
growth. In fact, within local economic systems the variety of
interacting economic institutions gives place to an exchange
of different but very complementary kinds of knowledge. This
multilayer communication system fosters multilateral trade of
knowledge and shapes innovation processes. New information and
communication technologies find here a receptive organisational
structure, and claim for focalised policies.
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E-Learning
for European Industry
Michael KELLEHER(1), Andrew HALDANE(2) & Gertjan van HEIJST(3)
(1)European Consortium for the Learning Organisation, Venelle
des Lauriers 8, B-1300 Wavre, Belgium
(2)European Consortium for the Learning Organisation, Venelle
des Lauriers 8, B-1300 Wavre, Belgium
(3) Kenniscentrum Cibit, Arthur van Schendelstraat 570, Utrecht,
Netherlands
The Esprit Programme of the
4th Framework established a thematic programme on IT for Learning
and Training in Industry (LTI). The programme was launched in
late 1998 and part-sponsors sixteen innovative RTD projects designed
to develop new solutions to industrial problems. The specific
challenges it addresses are the adoption of knowledge management
strategies and the need to develop a learning organisation culture
within an increasingly knowledge-based European industrial infrastructure.
This paper will establish the key lessons learned from the LTI
community of projects in the areas of e-learning for European
industry and illustrate those lessons with examples of how specific
projects are addressing this important policy arena.
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Making
innovation exploitation a success business story: The IST DILEMMA
Project
(1) Vassilios TSAKALOS, Nikolaos MELANITIS, Anastasia CONSTANTINOU
(2) Adamantios KOUMPIS
(3) Zoya DAMIANOVA, Alexandros MICHAELIDES, Laurent VOLLE, Tilmann
HAUG, Alex SMEETS
(1) HELP-FORWARD Network, Xenofontos 5, GR - 105 57 Athens, Greece
(2) Unisoft S.A., Michael Kalou 6, GR - 546 29 Thessaloniki,
Greece
(3) Innovation Relay Centre Network (Bulgaria, Cyprus, France,
Germany, UK)
Mediation services in the domains
of innovation exploitation and technology transfer (partially
based on information supply) are very often provided for free
since they are subsidised by a public body. This situation often
influences the quality of the services provided and in the longer
term undermines the very existence of these activities (taking
also into account that public funding is not for ever). The main
characteristic of the service presented in the paper is its flexibility
to combine information entities and provision procedures in order
to build compound service (i.e. meta-service) and service packages
(bundles), oriented to serve customers with highly differentiated
needs related to content, functionality and costs. The facilitation
of service management, based upon user behavioural patterns,
forms the basis for assessing the added value of the service.
A billing architecture provided by the technology providers of
the consortium enables the usage-driven terrifying of the service.
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THINK
BIG: Think Business, Innovation, and Growth
Ingo HUSSLA and Andrea THIEMANN
IZET Innovationszentrum Itzehoe, Gesellschaft für Technologieförderung
Itzehoe mbH, Fraunhoferstrasse 3, 25524 Itzehoe, Germany
Two years experience from European
test beds in IT entrepreneurship training in the course of the
pilot ESPRIT accompanying measure TRAIN-IT is reported. TRAIN-IT™
supported 265 potential entrepreneurs from ESPRIT projects. A
one week hands-on training course, individual follow-up, and
customised coaching and mentoring in all issues of writing an
investor winning business plan has been offered. Up to now, 30
new IT companies from the `New Economy` resulted from TRAIN-IT™
activities, and more than 60 business plans were written. Clearly,
access to venture capital and mentoring by business angels is
no longer the stumble stone towards success of European start-ups.
The obvious problem realised is likely a cultural one, namely
a lack of thinking big: thinking towards business, innovation,
and growth to develop a sustainable culture of entrepreneurship
in e-Europe must be further encouraged by new innovation measures
and policies.
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Design
of a Web-Based Training System: Focus on the Internet, E-Commerce
& EDI
Yanqing DUAN, Roisin MULLINS, David HAMBLIN
Luton Business School
University of Luton
Luton LU1 3JU, UK
Surveys and focus groups were
conducted to assess the awareness and expertise of employees
from SME's in the use of information and communication technologies
(ICT's). The surveys and focus groups detected generally low
levels of awareness and skills. As a result of these findings
a Leonardo da Vinci funded pilot project, named TRICTSME (Training
in the use of Information and Communication Technologies for
SME's) is currently underway. The aim of the TRICTSME team is
to design and develop an intelligent web-based training tool
to aid managers in implementing and understanding these ICT's
for all their core business functions.
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FifeDirect
- using the Internet for regional economic development and social
inclusion
Andy LAKE
HOP Associates, 55 West Street, Comberton, Cambridge, CB3 7DS,
United Kingdom
Much is expected of the new
information and communications technologies (ICT) in terms of
promoting economic opportunity, and for the more effective delivery
of services by public bodies. Fife Direct (www.fifedirect.org.uk)
is a pioneering project delivering both these aims. This paper
will outline the issues in the development of Fife Direct, the
lessons learned, the benefits delivered, anticipated future developments
and the applicability of the website and the associated community
network to other areas in Europe.
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Multimedia
Course in a Professional Target: Electronic Commerce
Manuel CASTRO(1), Antonio COLMENAR(1), Carlos de MORA(1), Fernando
YEVES(1) and Juan PEIRE (2)
(1) Electrical and Computer Department / UNED
Ciudad Universitaria, s/n - 28040 Madrid - SPAIN
(2) International Computer Science Institute-ICSI
1947 Center St. Suite 600. Berkeley, CA 94704
Tel: +510 666 2921; Email: peire@icsi.berkeley.edu
This paper deals with the highly
demanded courses on e-commerce. Educational and distance learning
courses in this new field have to consider the new possibilities
that the Internet close related technologies are taking place.
Web design courses, CD-ROM capabilities, interactive tutorial
through Internet as well as a comprehensive e-commerce course's
content are presented.
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Accelerating
eCommerce in Europe through networked regional and national Activities
Annette FLOTTMANN-NILSSON
FTK European Affairs
Martin-Schmeisser-Weg 4
D-44227 Dortmund
Germany
To 'e' or not to 'e' - this
is the essential question European companies face - and have
to answer now. Where European Initiatives act on a political
level, and thus their implementation is taking time, European
regions have acknowledged the need for immediate action. The
need to accelerate eCommerce in Europe is evident, getting innovative
start-ups into business, and supporting SMEs in the uptake of
eCommerce by regional initiatives is a major factor to achieve
this objective. But: to withstand the rising competitive pressure
from the other side of the Atlantic, Europe's most innovative
regional initiatives have to be bundled, synergies created, and
concepts need to be transferred. Since 1995, the German regional
initiative media NRW has successfully shaped the Information
Society. Now, a major challenge for this initiative is the acceleration
of eCommerce as the main driving force of the eEconomy which
urgently needs to gather speed in Europe.
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Linking
the Scandinavian countries and Scotland through Information Technology:
Best practice experiences from the IT-Scand project
Kim Davis(1) and Caspian Richards(2)
(1)SINTEF Electronics & Cybernetics, Post Box 124 Blindern,
0314 OSLO
Norway,
(2)Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, King's College,
Aberdeen AB24 3UF, Scotland,
IT-Scand, a Scandanavian and
Scots cooperation network, is just ending its five year long
formal co-operation. The final result of IT-Scand was a best
practice study on SMEs involved in IT in the northern most peripheral
areas of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Scotland. The study was
based on structure interviews with selected well-qualified companies
that resulted in good practice principles emerging from the experience
of those who had extensive experience in IT-related transnational
projects. The results showed a clear set of values play a central
role in shaping the expectations of participants in transnational
projects. These values were described as: transparency in dealing
with one's partners; aiming to gain added value from a project
for each partner in both social and technical terms; being open
to and learning from differences in the business cultures and
techniques of partners in other countries; and the centrality
of the human dimension to the success of a project.
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Innovation-Online:
A Vortal for Supporting Innovative SMEs within a Regional Economy
Paul ANDERSON
The Regional Unit, The University of Nottingham, University Park,
Nottingham, NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
Assisting innovative SMEs with
the continual process of transformation in the new economy is
a key challenge for regional economic development. Traditionally,
SMEs have not had the in-house resource to engage in innovation
and development and have relied on external sources of such information.
The Internet provides new channels for such knowledge distribution,
but this paper argues that the Web is a difficult medium for
SMEs to acquire knowledge. One answer to this has been the move
towards Portals, or jumping off points for the Web and latterly
there have moves towards vertical portals - vortals - which focus
on specific industrial sectors. This paper outlines the development
of such a vortal - Innovation-online - to provide mediated access
to information for engineering companies and to assist with links
into the knowledge-base provided by the Universities.
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PREMISE:
Increasing European SMEs' Take-Up of Electronic Commerce
Lindsay WITTENBERG, Director
TAPAS-e.com limited
41 Portland Avenue, Hove, E. Sussex GB - BN3 5NF
PREMISE is an EC-funded project
which, by developing models for new awareness and support actions
for use by intermediaries, helped SMEs to understand the practicalities
and business impact of e-commerce. The project's results were
unusual by virtue of: 1) their focus on practical issues for
SMEs; 2) the contribution of SMEs' views to the design of the
models; 3) the multilingual project website; 4) the adaptability
of the models. Additional benefits included greater understanding
of multicultural issues in relation to SMEs, intermediaries and
project management. Since the end of the project in May 2000
partners have developed some of the models further, for use in
specific (e.g. sector-focused) environments. Five months on from
the completion of PREMISE, this paper provides an insight into
its Awareness Models and the ancillary lessons of the project,
and describes how, in a multicultural environment, take-up of
e-commerce by SMEs can be encouraged.
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Support
to Project Proposers under the IST Programme
Paul DRATH(1), Roland PLEGER(2), Roberto GAGLIARDI(3), Silvana
MUSCELLA(4) and Alfredo CECCARELLI(5)
(1)Singleimage Ltd, 3 Foundry Walk St Ives Cambridgeshire PE17
4FW, UK
(2)DLR, Linder Höhe, D-51147 Cologne, Germany
(3) Consorzio Pisa Ricerche, Piazza A. D'Ancona, 1 5612 7 Pisa,
Italy
(4)Consorzio Pisa Ricerche, Piazza A. D'Ancona, 1 56127 Pisa,
Italy
(5)CNUCE/CNR, Via Alfieri, 1 56010 Ghezzano, Pisa, Italy
Ideal-ist-5fp, which extends
from the EU projects Idealfit & of Ideal-ist set up to accompany
the ESPRIT and now IST programme under EC Framework Research
Programmes, has proved to successfully reduce the barriers faced
by organisations wishing to participate in the IST programme.
How this has been and is continuing to be accomplished will be
expressed in the following paper. The National Contact Points
are appointed in his country to contribute to the participation
in the IST programme. By communicating in the National language
with potential proposers it is possible to offer better services
to potential proposers such as building new consortia through
partner search, training workshops for NCPs themselves organised
by the Commission and organising National and International workshops
for proposers. Furthermore, trying to find the most suitable
partner search to carry out a research project is the main obstacle
which often discourages those first time proposers to participate
in Community funded programmes Idealist-5fp will explain how
it achieves this.
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