Forth SPICE G + G Workshop and 171st SPICE Group Meeting

Berlin, Germany
13 – 14 Dec 2013

The SPICE G & G 2014 Workshop was attended by the SPICE Group members Barbara Harley (USA), Peter Nagy (Hungary), Omer Oz (Turkey), Janis Stabulnieks (Latvia) , Francisco Soares (Portugal), Ints Viksna (Latvia), the German members Karl-Heinz Klinger, Gerhard Raetz, Uwe Seidel, Rolf Friedrichsdorf, Heinz Fiedler, Larisa Brovarska and as invited guests from Germany Andre Domin (Heidelberg) as well as Roland Sillmann, Lars Hansen, Thomas Lämmer-Gamp, Fabian Feldhaus und Steffen Terberl (all Berlin). Here we only can give some brief information about the Workshop. More details are available in “SPICE Update” No 107 (on our website).
The “Gründerhaus” (house of start-up entrepreneurs) of the Free University of Berlin was not only the place of the SPICE G & G 2014 Workshop. The building is the core of many activities to promote and support entrepreneurship as part of PROFUND, the start-up support system of the Free University of Berlin with four locations to cater for the different needs of entrepreneurs.
For having relaxed start the SPICE G&G 2013 was opened with the World Premiere of three new SPICE video clips showing the SPICE 20th anniversary events in Tallinn (September 2011), the recent activities of the network at the Baltic Dynamics 2013 conference in Riga, and a special feature “Planting the Innovation Tree Latvia” , These videos are available on the SPICE Art Ball website and on YouTube
Tallinn: http://youtu.be/x2UNo8qWmhs
Riga: http://youtu.be/nMRUmsvSCMo
Innovation Tree http://youtu.be/TKmUkzjfUfc
After these videos a spontaneous discussion with one of the entrepreneurs working in the “Günderhaus” made the start of the workshop. The entrepreneur Stephan Arndt just wanted to check if packages piled up in the meeting room were ready for mailing, but readily presented his company and answered numerous questions about how this venture started and the planned development.
Contact: stefan.arndt@fu-berlin.de Web: http://www.lebepur.com/
The first workshop topic “Pre-Incubation at Universities – the needs of knowledge based start-ups and pre-incubators as partners for incubators” was opened by a presentation by Fabian Feldhaus und Steffen Terberl about the experience of this university incubator that began to work in 2006. Since then more than 100 start-ups have graduated from PFOFUND and 23 million EURO of finance could be acquired. The special approach of PROFUND i to actively search the university to technology developments that could serve as basis for a start-up. Once ideas from research are identified they can serve for acquiring funding from the German Federal start-up support program EXIST funding the cost of such projects for a year if the idea is based on technology transfer from a university and succeeds in the competitive process.
Contact: Fabian.Feldhaus@fu-berlin.de and steffen.terberl@fu-berlin.de
SDO Profile: www.spica-directory.net/centers/?id=2137, Web: www.fu-berlin.de/sites/profund/

A site visit to the latest business incubation project of Berlin, the “South - West Technology Center” (TC SW). Using the existing infrastructure of a former US military hospital the project is aimed at supporting start-ups and collaboration between science and industry. Therefore, close cooperation with the Free University of Berlin
(FUB), including their pre- incubator and start-up initiative "PROFUND" as well as research institutions is an essential part of the concept. The TC SW will offer the space and services startups need after having graduated from pre-incubation.
Contact: Gerhard Raetz, raetz@izbm.de

“Benchmarking and Quality labelling of Clusters” was the next workshop topic with an introduction by Thomas Lämmer-Gamp. He informed about the activities of the European for Cluster Analysis (ESCA, http://www.cluster-analysis.org/) that already has benchmarked more than 500 cluster management
organizations in terms of their structures, composition of the cluster and services.
Contact: Thomas Lämmer-Gamp tlg@vdivde-it.de

“Business Incubation in Systemic Technology Diffusion” was the last workshop topics and Uwe Seidel triggered discussion with his presentation of important developments regarding system innovations and the need for building and maintaining relevant networks. He also introduced to “embedded incubation” that includes a combination of traditional incubation services and new forms of support with a focus on the formation of industrial networks and end-customer involvement.
Contact: Uwe Seidel uwe.seidel@vdivde-it.de
SDO Profile: www.spica-directory.net/asf/?id=2423&cc=21

And finally, the activity that gave the name to this series of SPICE Workshops: Gluhwein & Grill Sauseage. When it all began the idea of a SPICE pre-Christmas meeting was just to explore the Christmas Markets in Berlin. However, that meeting – initiated in 2010 by Ints Viksna, Latvia – brought so much insight that continuation was decided. At the forth meeting the “official” part, the round-table discussions took a full day. The internal SPICE Meeting “for members only” continued the discussion that started in Riga at the Baltic Dynamics about the “Future of SPICE”. However, also visiting Christmas Markets also was part of the program.


Host: SPICE Group
Contact: Larisa Brovarska send mail