Lithuania: recent conferences dedicated to innovation

Lithuania has been promoting various kinds of innovation in this year especially by organising conferences to attract relevant actors and to bring the message of good practices throughout the country.

Since 2008 every year Lithuania has been committed itself to organize international innovation conference and every year it has topics dedicated to different innovation issues.

In September 2011, a delegation led by Simon P. Worden, director of the NASA Ames Research Center, first time came to Lithuania. The purpose of this visit was to look for reliable partners in Lithuania. During the visit, Mr Simon P. Worden gave a lecture “Prospects of Space Research of Solar System” in Vilnius University.

This type of development has continued in November 2011, another NASA delegation also came to Lithuania and took part in an international conference „Space Economy in the Multipolar World“ organized by the Lithuanian Space Association. NASA delegation was also interested in specific opportunities to conduct biotechnological research together with the Lithuanian scientists. The delegation members familiarized themselves in greater detail with small satellites construction and application works conducted at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, research in the fields of piezoelectric and ultrasound technologies conducted at Kaunas University of Technology and with laser technologies developed at Vilnius University.

On 10th of November 2011, the conference “Clustering – a window to global competitiveness“ was dedicated to the promotion of innovative clusters as important eco-systems since they offer a favourable business environment that stimulates and encourages competitiveness, innovation and growth. Foreign speakers represented institutions like the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Higher Education of Denmark, the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Poland, Swedish Innovation Agency “VINNOVA”, Creative and Digital Cluster, ACME (UK) andWarwick Enterprise (UK). Speakers from Lithuania presented local good practice examples.

Lithuania was represented by two cluster representatives: Photovoltaic Cluster was introduced by Professor Algirdas Galdikas, Director of the Applied Research Institute for Prospective Technologies (ProTech), and Vilnius Film Cluster – by Kęstutis Drazdauskas, Coordinator of the Vilnius Film Cluster.

As the Minister of Economy, Rimantas Žylius emphasised: “In Lithuania, clustering is in its initial stage yet as business representatives still lack trust towards each other. In the process of product development and aiming to compete in international markets clustering may be crucial for the business sector development in Lithuania. We therefore expect the best practice examples shared by foreign and Lithuanian representatives at this year’s Conference to demonstrate the benefits brought by clustering as well as to encourage companies to form clusters.”

References / further information:

Europe’s clustering professionals gather in Vilnius: http://www.ukmin.lt/en/dokumentai/ziniasklaidai/detail.php?ID=31715