• Electrosoft scoops a SABS Prototype Award
  
• IT experts in the making while a dream comes true
  
• Expertron clinches another deal
  
• National Forum for Incubators on the cards
  
• CoachLab helps students to fast track skills development
  
• Hub interacts with young entrepreneurs
  
• Visitors to the Hub
• Hub Progress Sheet
• Infrastructure development milestones

Stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship

Following the article on incubation in our previous newsletter, based on extracts from presentations by international experts at the NBIA and CABI conferences in Canada earlier this year, Jill Sawers, Incubation Manager at The Innovation Hub shares some additional insights gained from discussions with leaders in entrepreneurship development in Holland, the United States and England.

Some of the people and places that Jill visited included:

• Prof Joop Halman of the Technology University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. He is an expert in risk diagnosing methodology in the innovation process. According to him risk analysis entails using many different criteria such as commercialisation, manufacturing, positioning and branding. Experts are used to identify the criteria and the risk analysis method identifies knowledge gaps that are fed back to the innovation project team. Currently the focus of this research at Eindhoven is on managing the risks once they have been diagnosed.

  The important character traits of an entrepreneur are drive, creativity, achievement orientation, independence and living with uncertainty and calculated risk. - Vin Morar, University of Twente

  Prof Halman is also exploring the relatively new area of technology entrepreneurship. According to him the difference between technology managers and technology entrepreneurs is that managers think about profit and loss while entrepreneurs think about affordable loss. He suggests that one way to stimulate entrepreneurship is to run a "new business" competition where multi-disciplinary teams compete and winners are awarded monetary prizes.

• Dr Aard Groen and Vin Morar at the University of Twente in the Netherlands are both passionate about promoting entrepreneurship. Activities geared towards the promotion of entrepreneurship include their TOP programme (temporary entrepreneurship position) where successful candidates receive an interest-free loan for a year to run a business under the guidance of business and technical mentors. Additional activities undertaken by the University of Twente to stimulate entrepreneurship include collaboration with banks for funding, experiential research, undergraduate training in entrepreneurship, students assisting SMMEs with problem solving and an annual conference to develop networks.

• At the London Business Innovation Centre (BIC), Gareth Osborne defines successful innovation as the exploitation of new ideas and an entrepreneur as someone who sees, seizes and realises an opportunity. Statistics indicate that 89% of businesses that have started in a BIC survive more than 5 years, while comparative data suggests that 30% of new businesses fail within the first 3 years. Although the BIC acknowledges the importance of entrepreneurial character traits, the criterion they seek from an entrepreneur is commitment.

At the CABI conference David Crane, Business Editor of the Toronto Star in the United States, emphasised the need to create high-tech companies in existing industries where the focus should be on improving productivity through innovation. To win the support of the public, he said, the relationship between investing in knowledge and the creation of wealth and jobs needs continually to be explained and reinforced.

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