Fifth SPICE G & G Workshop and 177th SPICE Group Meeting

Berlin, Germany
11 – 13 Dec 2014

Hosted by CHIC, the Charlottenburg Innovation Center, a business incubator run by IZBM GmbH, the Fifth SPICE G & G Workshop brought together 14 participants from 7 countries.
With respect to the first “G” in the workshop title and the tradition of this series, the official opening dinner was held in an historical S-Bahn waggon (Berlin city railway car) located directly at the main hall to Tegel airport. Here, a grilled sausage (a typical Berlin “Curry Wurst” with French fries) was served stylish as main course accompanied by a beer from Berlin. Physically strengthened in this way the workshop participants could move to a different place for experiencing the second “G”, the first cup of “Gluehwein” (hot wine) in front of Hotel California on Berlin’s famous Kurfürstendamm followed by further G & G’s on the Christmas Market in front of Charlottenburg Castle.

The workshop on following day had a great start with the “for members only” session mainly discussing the development of SPICA Directory. The proposal to introduce a system of “curators” for this information system presented by SPICE Group President Heinz Fiedler found positive resonance. Such curators could be assigned for defined regions (countries) or specific types of business incubation organizations. This concept will be further developed for being introduced as soon as possible with members who volunteered to help with fine tuning and implementation.

After a warm welcome by the host represented by Lars Hansen, IZBM GmbH, and an introduction to the CHIC business incubator set the scene for the workshop. Two entrepreneurs, clients of CHIC gave insights into their experiences: Erwin Debruijzer, Humedics GmbH, a venture capital financed medicine technology firm that won the Innovation Award Berlin Brandenburg 2014, and Karsten Friedrich Complevo GmbH, a self-financed software company that works in process optimization. Further workshop topics:
SPICE Group member Radu Ticiu, CEO of the Startup Hub in Timisoara, Romania, provided interesting insights under the topic “Business Incubation / Acceleration within the Timisoara tech entrepreneurship ecosystem”.
“Key Performance Indicators for Business Incubators – why, what for, how?” with introductions provided by Anna Torz, Managing Director of InQbator” and Ints Viksna, Board member of the Latvian Technological Center in Riga and member of SPICE Group
Peter Nagy, SPICE Group member from Budapest, Hungary, introduced to the topic “Social Incubation”.
Discussion about all three topics was lively so that – as usual – time was too short. Also the “G & G” on Berlin’s Christmas markets needed attention and therefore discussion could not be extended into the evening hours. It goes without saying that the evening after the workshop was enjoyed by the participants.


Host: CHIC
Contact: Gerhard Raetz send mail