Part of the UMIC team, Dr Martino Picardo and Tony Walker, recently visited the Bulgarian town of Burgas on an international collaboration exchange on incubation. It is the capital of Burgas Province and an important industrial, transport, cultural and tourist centre. Surrounded by the coastal Burgas Lakes and located at the westernmost point of the Black Sea, Burgas has the largest and most important Bulgarian port.
It is home to the High Tech Business Incubator run by Todor Stanev and his team. HTBI has an incubator housing twelve companies form a range of areas such as digital, creative and ICT. Todor originally met with Martino on an international incubator programme called ACHIEVE MORE – Enabling the Success of Entrepreneurship and Innovation through Incubation and Clustering.
Initial visits by Todor in July 2009 and January 2010 culminated in an MOU being signed between HTBI and UMIC. This is to assist HTBi and its partners in how to develop incubation as a strategic part of developing new science and technology clusters and creating a knowledge based economy of spin out businesses and supporting local high tech entrepreneurs.
The visit commenced in early Sept 2010 and there was a packed schedule of meetings and discussions with the HTBI team, the Rectors of the two major Universities in Burgas, which are business and technology focused, the Chambers of Commerce, Municipal Government and the Burgas EU funding team. Other visits included seeing the proposed site of the 40,000ft2 incubator located close to the Technical University and Ministry.
The culmination was an agreement with HTBI to assist them in a range of areas that will lead to applications for EU funding to support incubation, technology transfer, regeneration and cluster development.
Martino Picardo said of the visit:
“Our overall impression was one of an area that is keen to build its economic base on new knowledge based industries. The town is in a unique position with its industrial heritage, natural resources and buoyant population with a keen desire to grow on the international stage. We are happy to support them in a small way by giving our own ‘Manchester Method’ experiences and building links between our two regions.”
One of the most striking indicators of the desire to grow the enterprise base was an Open Coffee event organised by Rastermania, one of the incubating companies. It was a packed session in a local café with around 30 young and budding entrepreneurs. They were keen to practice their elevator pitches and gain feedback from UMIC and learn how incubation could assist them in their goals.
Tony Walker commented:
“We emphasised that it was key Burgas developed its own identity and model around incubation and they were keen to grasp this. I have no doubt that this area will become a long-term partner of UMIC and a significant force in the Black Sea region and internationally. Our hosts displayed the most genuine and open willingness to learn and it was gratifying to assist them.”
The next steps are for the two organisations to build on this visit and propose regular knowledge exchange visits and promotion between the knowledge base, incubating companies and civic institutions of both regions.
