Le barriere all’innovazione per le PMI: un comune denominatore nell’area mitteleuropea Pawel Warszycki Direttore Esecutivo HIE-RO Hanseatic Institute for Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Rostock (DE)

1. Barriers to innovation for SMEs: a common
denominator in Central Europe
Pawel Warszycki
HIE‐RO Hanseatic Institute for Entrepreneurship & Regional Development at
the University of Rostock (DE)
www.cebbis.eu …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The CEBBIS project is implemented through the Central Europe Programme co‐financed by the ERDF

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GLOBAL CHALLENGES
vs
TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY

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AIM OF THE ANALYSIS
 The aim of the expertise is to provide a technical report
with the analysis, identification and description of barriers to
innovation development processes of Small and Medium
Enterprises (SMEs) in different regions in Germany, Italy,
Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia and Poland.

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METHODOLOGY OF THE SURVEY
Secondary data
 Investigation on NUTS level
 highlight the most important national (country level)
trends and facts
Primary data
 Survey made by using questionnaires with experts from
different groups of stakeholders

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STRUCTURE OF THE REPORTS
1. Executive summary
2. General characteristics
3. Evaluation of R&D and technology transfer
4. Best practices on technology transfer
5. Recommendations, suggestions and proposals

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DEFINITION OF THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY
Technology transfer is the process of sharing of skills, knowledge,
technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and
facilities among governments and other institutions to ensure that
scientific and technological developments are accessible to a wider range
of users who can then further develop and exploit the technology into new
products, processes, applications, materials or services. It is closely related
to (and may arguably be considered a subset of) knowledge transfer.
Technology brokers are people who discovered how to bridge the disparate
worlds and apply scientific concepts or processes to new situations or
circumstances.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY
IN FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA REGION ‐ ITALY
1. Researchers lack of motivation and information for applicable
innovation
2. Lack of communication and of experience in working together
3. Lack of funding because of economic and cultural factors

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY IN
FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA REGION ‐ ITALY
1. Researchers lack of motivation and information for applicable
innovation
Researchers concentrate on the best research while business focus
on their own world to make more profit.
The scientific institutions lack the right practical research approach
to global or local level. The researches, which are focused on global
level, often are not able to find someone who wants to apply their
research results at local level. It is also true that many researchers
focus on the global level but forget the local needs.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY
IN FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA REGION ‐ ITALY
2. Lack of communication and experience of working together
The triple helix governance (administration, business and academics)
does not exist. They have a little experience of working with each
other and each has its own perception and concentration.
The Business Development Organisations (BDOs) plays a critical in
diffusing the knowledge among actors.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY
IN FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA REGION ‐ ITALY
3. Lack of funding because of economic and cultural factors
In Italy and in the FVG region the investment for research and
innovation is not high, because it lacks of culture of doing that. It is
still often understood that investment in research and development
is only a cost and there will be no revenues from such action.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN SILESIA REGION (PL)
1. Low interest of innovation at the scientific institutes
2. Low capacity of the scientific institutes in terms of organizational facilities
3. Problem in cooperation and communication with business sector
4. Rigid legal frame work and high bureaucracy
5. Lack of information for cooperation and making decisions
6. Unclear structure and function of the BDOs in the region
7. Low human capacity in BDOs to perform their tasks well
8. Low level of innovation and applying new innovation within SMEs
9. Mistrust in cooperation with BDOs and the scientific institutions

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN POLAND
1. Insufficient internal R&D in small and medium‐sized enterprises
2. Low exploitation of patents and licences for manufacturing of innovative products
3. Difficulties in the co‐operation between the enterprise and the research institute
4. Lack of pro‐innovative engineering services for manufacturing companies located in
clusters and technological parks
5. Lack of coherence between R&D performed in R&D institutes and universities and
the needs of entrepreneurs
6. Lack of clearly defined specialization (sectoral profile) of most of technological parks
and clusters
7. Low level of readiness to undertake the risk of economic activity by scientists and
researchers
8. Insufficient links between the system of professional education of the youth and
labour market

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN SILESIA REGION (PL)
Monitoring the activities of small enterprises and statistical
data reveals that in most of small enterprises internal R&D on
new products practically doesn’t exist. The costs to surpass this
barrier are impossible to cover for most small entrepreneurs
who generally finance their activities through their own means.
Existing venture capital funds and „business angels‟ do not
concentrate on finding and supporting small projects – they
prefer to support development of ready made products (even as
prototypes) than to decide to finance new product ideas
without any guarantee for success.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN SILESIA REGION (PL)
The organizational structure is not optimal – there are funds for
facilities like laboratories but no funds for staff. Companies,
however, sometimes have got better laboratories then
universities.
The general system of higher education seems to be rather
destructive concerning entrepreneurial behavior of researchers.
The decision‐makers at the universities create structural
barriers for cooperation with the business

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN SILESIA REGION (PL)
The education system creates pressure on the scientist to follow
the formal career path (i.e. PhD dissertation, habilitation,
number of scientific publications etc.). For a typical scientist at
the university or R&D institutes the priority is the number of
publications and not the number of innovations. Therefore, they
have not got enough time for applied science in cooperation
with business.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN SILESIA REGION (PL)
The communication between the scientist and business sector is
another barrier. Information flow about existing solution from
the science to business is missing. Universities lock the
information on the research results if they were financed by
public funds – it causes double work on technology‐based
solutions. Communication language of scientists is too difficult
for both business and decision‐makers. However,
communication among scientists is also problematic. There is
not efficient dissemination of the information about already
existing solutions developed by researchers at universities.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN REGIONS BRANDENBURG
AND STUTTGART ‐ GERMANY
1. Low interests for innovation for SMEs at the scientific institutes
2. Low capacity of the scientific institutes to work with business sector
3. Problem in cooperation and communication with business sector
4. Rigid and high bureaucracy
5. Lack of information for making decisions
6. Unclear structure and function of the BDOs in the region
7. Low level of innovation and applying new innovation within SMEs
8. Low efficient cooperation among all actors involved in TT

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN REGIONS BRANDENBURG
AND STUTTGART ‐ GERMANY
The barriers within the scientific institute are traditional career
path, organisational, structure and bureaucracy. The education
system creates pressure on the scientist to follow the formal
career path i.e. PhD dissertation, habilitation. The evaluation
system of the scientists‘ performance force them to focus more
on the basic research and publishing of its results then on applied
research (research publication). Therefore, the priority of the
scientist is the number of publications and not the number of
innovations.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN REGIONS BRANDENBURG
AND STUTTGART ‐ GERMANY
University staff is obliged to focus on their own projects financed
by external funds (like DFG). The projects within companies have
not got the same status in work evaluation of researchers.
Besides, the preparation process at universities (e.g. permission,
negotiation procedures, flexibility etc.) for the projects linked to
the business is much too long.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN REGIONS BRANDENBURG
AND STUTTGART ‐ GERMANY
Decision‐makers do not have sufficient know‐how concerning
specific business sectorial character. Lots of actions are
established not close enough to the real business life.
Funds planning process too often is not based on the analysis.
The lack of input information causes decision taken by heart.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN REGIONS BRANDENBURG
AND STUTTGART ‐ GERMANY
There is not enough transparency in the BDOs structure on the
regional level – too complex structure. There are overlaps of the
BDOs activities because of their too general character / tasks. It is
too less thematic focus of existing BDOs and therefore lack of
specialization

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN CZECH REPUBLIC
1. Insufficient demand from Czech companies for the results of R&D
2. Difficult orientation in R&D offer and its usefulness (lack of evaluation
tools)
3. Poor access to finances
4. Not transparent legislation system (especially for spin‐offs or start‐ups)
5. Unsatisfactory level of cooperation between organizations within/and
related networks
6. Lack of motivation and conservative thinking of R&D personnel

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN CZECH REPUBLIC
1. insufficient demand from Czech companies for the results of
R&D, which is probably caused not only by lack of funds in
smaller companies, but also by the orientation of firms to use
yet relatively cheap labor and products with lower added value
(in the survey, more than half of companies said that advantage
in foreign markets are understood to be a low cost of their
products).

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN CZECH REPUBLIC
2. difficult orientation in R&D offer and its usefulness (lack of
evaluation tools)

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN CZECH REPUBLIC
3. Very important aspect of the commercialization of R&D are
spin‐off companies. The survey showed that the greatest barrier
to the emergence of such firms in R&D institutions is
represented by poor access to finance (particularly pre‐seed and
seed capital).

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN CZECH REPUBLIC
4. Legislation is complicated as well and very important role
dwells in prejudices of academics and institutional culture
focused mainly on academic research.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN CZECH REPUBLIC
5. Cooperation between organizations and related networking is
also unsatisfactory. The concept of clusters and their
importance for regional economic development is not
appreciated yet in the public or private sector. Clusters are not
yet a crucial priority for public policies to sub‐national level
neither.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN CZECH REPUBLIC
6. Lack of motivation and conservative thinking of R&D personnel,
who consider research as an "academic game" without
practical outcomes. This reasoning applies to an evaluation
system of R&D as well, which results are not yet sufficiently
linked to the allocation of public funds for research

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN HUNGARY
1. Low capacities on R&D
2. Organizational problems
3. University‐Industry co‐operation
4. Imbalance between supply and demand of educated workforce
5. Issues of SMEs
6. Sectoral heterogenity

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN HUNGARY
1. Low capacities on R&D
The state owned industrial research institutes with high capacities have
disappeared. Parallel, the industrial R&D capacities have decreased.
Fundamentally, these processes led to the currently operate R&D structure that has
three main pillars. The most developed part of the R&D institutions is the higher
education (especially universities), that have been followed by the institution
network of Hungarian Academy of Sciences. They mostly concentrate on basic
research and cannot give answers to the practical economic needs.
Most of the economic actors, especially the largest proportion of enterprises (SMEs)
have no direct R&D capacities on the one hand and mobilized external R&D
capacities on the other. It means that the innovative, Hungarian private owned
SMEs with high development potential cannot integrate their ideas to innovation
chain, so most of the ideas stagnate at early development phase.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN HUNGARY
2. Organizational problems
In the current situation the structure of the national innovation system is
fragmented and the coordination is not dedicated to one national level
body. Additionally there have been many types of regional or local level
intermediaries with overlapping activities in this filed. The basic innovation
services are given by many intermediaries, while services with high added
values are missing in many fields.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN HUNGARY
3. University‐Industry co‐operation
The universities have well developed co‐operation with large companies,
through formal agreements int he most cases. Up against it, SMEs have
special needs with low number of items. This need cannot be fitted to the
R&D structure of universities. Additionally the universities already have
their own technology transfer offices that could be good to manage
external co‐operations, but these bodies only work for their internal needs.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN HUNGARY
4. Unbalance between supply and demand of educated workforce
Especially the two partner regions – but broadly the whole country – faces
the problem that supply of well educated workforce at some fields
(especially engineering) is not available locally. More than 80% of the
graduated entrants have degree on social or economic sciences, while
about two third of the job opportunities connected to engineering.
Additionally, the training of technicians have decreased in the past two
decades to its 30%, while the demand have increased.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN HUNGARY
5. Issues of SMEs
Hungarian regional development policy manage SMEs as a unified group of
enterprises, while only 10‐15% of them can be characterized as an
innovative firm. All the supporting instruments and initiatives are
developed for the SMEs as a whole, that do not fit to the needs of
innovative ones in most of the cases.

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BARRIERS IN THE TRANSFER OF
TECHNOLOGY IN HUNGARY
6. Sectoral heterogenity
By knowing the economic characteristics of Hungary and especially the two
partner regions, the sectoral heterogenity of the regional economies is
clear. It might be an advantage, but practivally it means that there is no
clear „image” of the regions and there are no clear branchspecific
strategies and supporting instruments. Currently the economic
characteristics of the regions are determined by the forieign owned large
companies.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

37. Pawel Warszycki
HIE‐RO Hanseatic Institute for Entrepreneurship
& Regional Development at the University of
Rostock (DE)
www.cebbis.eu
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Ulmenstraße 69 ‐ Haus 3
18051 Rostock
phone: +49 381 498 5630
E‐mail: pawel.warszycki@hie‐ro.de
www.hie‐ro.de
The CEBBIS project is implemented through the Central Europe Programme co‐financed by the ERDF