The second edition of Cluj Innovation Days is scheduled to take place on March, 20th and 21st and is the main yearly event organized by Cluj IT Cluster. The President of the Cluster, Mr. Alexandru Tulai answered a few questions about the event, exclusively.
Ovidiu Mățan: Cluj IT Cluster organizes on the 20th- 21st of March the second edition of Cluj Innovation Days, event hosted this time by the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Cluj-Napoca. Why Cluj Innovation Days and not Cluj IT Innovation Days, as was the last year"s conference called?
Alexandru Tulai: This year"s edition of Cluj Innovation Days through the topic, guests and structure of the event aims at bringing together the main national and international stakeholders in the innovation process, decision-makers and individuals and organziations which are interested in changing the paradigm of how we do business and how we educate ourselves, so that we become more oriented towards the generation of innovative ideas and products with high added value. This is also the reason why our event, which we would like in time to become one of the major event of its kind,is no longer entitled Cluj IT Innovation Days. The location where it will take place is not meaningless either: we wish to emphasize the importance of the collaboration among researchers, businesses and public authorities.. Our vision of the IT industry is one in which IT&C becomes an indispensable infrastructure for development, present in all the verticals of economy and of the society. Cluj Innovation Days is, in my opinion, the type of event through which we can contribute towards a long-term consolidation of the IT community and to facilitate the development of connections with national and international business partners.
What do you attend to achieve with this year"s edition of Cluj Innovation Days?
Cluj Innovation Days is structured on three thematic sessions, ehich are Mastering Innovation, Fostering Entrepreneurship and Showcasing Innovation, organized as such in order to cover the three main constitutive aspects of innovation. The first thematic session regards innovation in a more general context and it is concerned with issues related to handling innovation through the management of the innovating product, intellectual property, support obtained through the European policies and strategies, as well as other aspects concerning the capacity to implement and sustain the innovation processes. The second session is oriented towards the entrepreneurship area and it aims at presenting to the public the main mechanisms and steps in the consolidation and capitalization of an innovating idea, by direct reference to the ingredients of startups, spinoffs, as well as ways of attracting investments and other available sources of financing. The last thematic session, Showcasing Innovation, aims at illustrating all the means and mechanisms that sustain innovation, by successful stories from the business area, meant to motivate and inspire young people to develop some entrepreneurial initiatives, but also the small companies that are in an incipient stage of development.
Who are the participants you are expecting at this event?
During the two days, the event will reunite over 400 people, from our country and from abroad, among which I would like to mention the representatives of the European Commission, Government of Romania and local public authorities, business poeple, representatives of the academic environment, ambassadors, members of other national and international clusters, but also representatives of business associations, of the financial-banking sector and investors. As guests, we also expect representatives of academia such as universities, the Romanian Academy and research institutes. Due to the great number of participants, but especially to the nature of their pursuits, we can state that, for two days, Cluj will become the regional capital of innovation.
More details on the Cluj Innovation Days 2014 event are available on the web site: www.clujinnovationdays.com