I think you chose the best moment to create this platform (Cluj Innovation City) and you will have all my and the European Commission"s support to materialize such value-added ideas. I thank you and learn that you can count on my support." - Mr. Dacian Ciolos, European Commissioner
The second edition of Cluj Innovation Days (CID) was, by all accounts, a success. During the two days Cluj-Napoca became the capital of innovation in Romania. We have managed, once again, to ascertain our city as one of the places where important things are happening. For the readers who are not aware about what CID represents I will try to summarize in the following paragraphs what we have in mind and how this year"s event went down.
Cluj Innovation Days is an international annual event focused on encouraging innovation, research and entrepreneurship as key ingredients towards building sustainability in businesses and community development. Our long term commitment is to make this event an international landmark for partnership opportunities among academia, business and public authorities where innovation and technological transfer are trusted cross-sectorial bridges.
This year"s event was organized by Cluj IT Cluster and aimed to bring together all the above, more exactly researchers and students, government and leaders and entrepreneurs. During the two days of the event more than 400 participants were involved in conferences and panels dedicated to the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in socio-economic development. The event was graciously hosted by the Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca, one of the most venerable, yet dynamic higher education institution in Romania. I will leave to you to judge whether we have succeeded by looking at the facts and figures of the conference.
Speakers:
Attendance during the 2 days of the conference
In terms of content CID2014 has been very varied and organized on 4 main tracks: Plenary, Mastering Innovation, Fostering Entrepreneurship and Showcasing Innovation. Many of our speakers and participants have expressed their positive feedback in regard to the content and organization of the event. During the first day of the conference, we had important keynote speakers and dedicated messages such as from mr. Dacian Ciolos, European Commissioner at the DG Agriculture and Rural Development, mr. Johannes Hahn, European Commissioner at the DG Regional Policy, mr. Mihena Costoiu, Delegated Ministry for Higher Education in the Romanian Government and a number of other important officials from state and local governments.
The Mastering Innovation track has tried to capture the essence of a unique and very important process, how to generate valuable ideas which can lead to products for the real economy. During the track speakers and participants debated the key components of the management of innovation and the ways of exploiting its results by generating growth and profit.
During the second day of the conference we scheduled two parallel tracks. Under the Fostering Entrepreneurship track we discussed what entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship are, how to run an innovative startup or how to manage a spin-off, how to make sure that ideas get the needed financing and how to take business globally. The Showcasing Innovation track has tried to motivate the audience with a series of success stories. Individuals behind such stories shared their experience with us.
The media plan we set up for the event has generated a lot of coverage in the press. According to our PR agency there were twice as much takeovers as the average for a conference this size.
Media coverage highlights:
The event had its own website, www.clujinnovationdays.com, since the moment of its lunch and until right after the event we had 1857 unique visitors and a total of more than 10.200 page views.
I would like to end by thanking to all our partners, especially BRD Group Societe General, Microsoft and Huawei. A special note goes to our hosts, the Life Sciences Institute Building at the USAMV Campus. And of course, with the invitation for the next year"s edition of Cluj Innovation Days.