What can Split learn from Vienna, Taiwan, Bologna and other innovation ecosystems?
Talent, a university, capital, startups, technology parks and institutions do not on their own create an innovation ecosystem. Real value emerges when we manage to connect them. Ecosystem Forum brings people from international innovation systems to Split so that we can discuss what works – and what Split can do better.
Almost every city today wants to be an innovation city.
Technology parks, incubators and coworking spaces are opening. Training programmes, hackathons and conferences are being organised. Yet results vary dramatically from city to city.
Why do some places continuously generate new companies and investment, while in others success still depends on a handful of exceptionally persistent individuals?
Ecosystem Forum focuses precisely on the infrastructure behind successful innovation – the links between knowledge, entrepreneurs, capital, institutions and international markets.
Vienna did not become a startup city by chance
The programme opens with Dudu Gencel of the Vienna Business Agency and the keynote Building an Innovation Ecosystem: Lessons from Vienna.
Vienna today has more than 1,600 startups, more than 70 investors and investment groups, and dozens of incubator and accelerator programmes. But more important than the numbers themselves is how talent, research, capital, infrastructure and the international market are connected.
A local startup needs a gateway to the world
That is why Ecosystem Forum does not stay within Europe.
Ecosystem representatives from Amsterdam, Taiwan, Korea and elsewhere will discuss how to give local startups access to international partners, customers, knowledge and capital.
A particular perspective comes from Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute – ITRI, an organisation that has spent decades building a bridge between applied research and industry.
We have the knowledge. How do we turn it into innovation?
One of the key questions of the Forum will be the transfer of knowledge from the laboratory to the market.
How do you recognise research with market potential? Who helps a researcher protect intellectual property, find an industrial partner, assemble a team or finance the first phase of development?
This question becomes especially relevant for Split through a panel bringing together representatives of FESB, PMF, the University of Split and international technology transfer experts.
Split has the knowledge, researchers, engineers and companies that already operate globally. The next question is how much of that potential we can turn into new products and companies.
A technology park is more than just space
Finally, the conversation returns to the very venue of Innovate Split.
Representatives of technology parks from Split, Rijeka, Šibenik and Mostar will discuss what a modern technology park should offer beyond business premises.
Because its real value emerges when a founder finds a mentor, talent meets a company, a startup meets an investor, a researcher meets an entrepreneur, and a local company gains access to the international market.
Ecosystem Forum is therefore not just a conversation about what Vienna, Taiwan, Bologna or Amsterdam are doing.
It is a conversation about what kind of innovation ecosystem we want to build in Split – and what we need to do today so that in a few years’ time others will come to learn from us.
You can view the full programme on the conference website.