This year the annual conference of the International Association of Science Parks is held in Tallinn, Estonia. Today, participants from a multitude of countries have assembled at the conference center in Swissotel, for a pre-programme seminar. I counted people from 28 countries in the well-attended seminar, whereof a number of people from seven African frontier economy countries.
The topic of the seminar is the process and tools for establishment of science and technology parks, a very hot topic in todays world.
In his introduction speech, Luis Sanz, the General Director of the IASP, spoke about the current sad state of Europe.
It is appropriate to quote his comment, as today is a day of destiny, the day of the second parliamentary election in Greece, and the world awaits the election fallout.
Sanz said that “the current crises has turned from an economic crises to now have become a political crises”.
Sanz also said “The way to get out of the European political mess, is to implement innovation and technology in our companies and places. Innovation must be a priority, to invest in innovation systems. Science and technology parks play a big part in this, and can take on to be developers and managers of knowledge industry clusters.”
This message follows on the message we in Bearing have brought out in this blog over the recent months. Place excellence in development of clusters and corporate innovation should be at the top of every European decision makers agenda.