Good Entrepreneurship Practice at Sofia University

Good Entrepreneurship Practice at Sofia University Roumen Nikolov Sofia University, Bulgaria European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Bulgaria is an integral part of the global economic and political environment • Expected full European Union membership by 2007; • Received invitation for NATO membership; • Bulgaria is a member of UN Security Council (took the Presidency in September 2002); • Strategic geographic location – a one hour time difference from Continental Europe; • Effective free trade agreements with most countries in the region; liberalized access to a regional market of over 550 million consumers; European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

SU - Educational and Scientific Centre of the Country • 35,000 students • 76 Bachelor’s and over 200 Master’s degree programmes • Over 3000 teachers and researchers • Very important role for the development of the country • Challenges: economic and social changes, new models of education, new role of universities, brain drain • European Space of Higher Education • Sofia University – to become a National and Regional High-Technology and Innovation Centre European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Global Production Network Local Society International Partnerships Policy makers End service users Professional Users Corporate R&D SMEs Sofia University Centre of Excellence In IST NGOs Local economy Business Users Science & Educ Researchers Global R&D Network Centre of IST, Sofia University European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Case Study Conceptual Framework • Clark, B. R. (1998). Creating Entrepreneurial Universities, Organisational Pathways of Transformation. Oxford: Pergamon • Van der Sijde, P. (2000). Entrepreneurship at an Entrepreneurial University, Enschede: University of Twente • entrepreneurial university – it understands the commercial value of knowledge Minimum of Entrepreneurial Actions for an Entr-Uni: • a strengthened steering core; • an expanded developmental periphery; • a diversified funding base; • a stimulated academic heartland; • an integrated entrepreneurial culture European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Indicators of Success • Degree of achievement of the ‘5 irreducible minimum of actions’ for an Entrepreneurial University • Number of researchers, teachers, PhDs • Number of international projects • Number of international and local partners • Number of MSc programmes European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Background • Political and Economic Situation: e-skills gap – demand > supply with 12% per year; Functioning market economy; Not enough modern economic management practice; not enough entrepreneurship and tendency of risk aversion; not enough public support; • Demographic trends: increased number of students – regular, part-time, distance; emigration of high-skilled professionals: internal & external brain-drain, Bulgaria last among 59 countries at WEF; difficult to make up; • Financial Downturn; • Relations with Industry–‘the stronger the university-industry-government cooperation is, the more competitive is the national economy’; Overall Competitive Ranking of Bulgaria – beyond the first 60 countries; no traditions and strong opposition; entrepreneurial young generation; • Severe Competitive Market– smaller private universities, international universities expansion, e-learning revolution; • Internal considerations– need of adaptation of the university to the new conditions European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Strengthened Steering Core • Well organized management core of strong minded change agents is of crucial importance. Need to build dynamic and more entrepreneurial units; • Centre of IST – operating horizontally across entire university and beyond; • Bulgarian Telework Association – interface with other stakeholders; • Cisco Regional Academy and Microsoft IT Academy; • Centre of European RTD Projects; • Experimental Technology Park in ICT and Nanotechnology; • Virtech Ltd – an incubated SME; European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Centre of IST organizes European Day of the Entrepreneur, 8-9 Oct., 2003: http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/ede European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

BgTA is among the organizers of: European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Virtech - an IST eWork Success Story European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Centre of ERTDP organizes: European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Expanded Developmental Periphery - a large network of partnering organizations • Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Finance, ICT Development Agency, Coordination Centre for Information, Communication and Management Technologies, Agency of SMEs, etc; • Applied Research and Communication Fun, Information Society Promotion Office – Bulgaria, Bulgarian IT Association – BAIT, Industry Association of Bulgarian Software Development Companies – BASSCOM, Bulgarian Telework Association, Public Computer and Communication Center Association, etc. • Large network of universities under the Virtual Department of Computing ‘John Atanasoff’ Project which comprises 15 Bulgarian universities and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; • Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. • Large network of SMEs coordinated by Bulgarian Telework Association; • Large international network • Student enterprises initiative. European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

E-Democracy & e-Government Project: European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Centre of IST - E-Learning Capacity: European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Another E-Learning Course: European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Sofia University – a Cisco Regional Academy European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

ARCADE - Architecture for Reusable Courseware Authoring and Delivery System Management User Management Chat DiscussionBoard ARCADE Core News Assess-ments Mails Assign-ments Curriculum Management AuthoringTool VirtualDisk Course Management European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Virtech cooperates with: European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Diversified Funding Base • International Projects - EC Fifth Framework Programme, World Bank, INCO COPERNICUS, PHARE, TEMPUS, Erasmus, Leonardo; • National Projects – Agency for ICT Development, Industry; • Training for industry, public administration and individuals; • Industrial research and development funded by large companies, such as Atomic Power Plant Kozlodui, Biovet-Peshtera, Silway-Sofia, etc; • Patents and intellectual property rights (IPR) – still not well developed; Some IPR intensive RTD results – ARCADE, Mall2000 B2B Portal, etc. • Venture capital and business angels – under-developed; • Sponsorship - general economic and social environment in Bulgaria does not support this channel to a desired extent; European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Stimulated Academic Heartland • Academic heartland is where traditional academic values are most firmly rooted. • When an enterprising university evolves a stronger steering core, and develops an outreach structure, and diversifies its income streams, its heartland is still found in the traditional academic departments formed around disciplines – new and old – and some interdisciplinary fields of study. Whether they accept or oppose a significant transformation is critical. • As each university is a bottom-heavy organization it is of crucial importance to ensure support for the promoted changes from the members of the basic units. • Excellent research and teaching staff - prerequisite for strengthening the academic heartland; • Entrepreneurial shift depends on the age and size of the university: the smaller – the better; • Sofia University is quite conservative and heavy to transform; European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Integrated Entrepreneurial Culture • Lack of entrepreneurial culture in Bulgarian individuals and organisations is among the most important obstacles to promoting entrepreneurship; • This mentality was cultivated during a long period of communist regime when any type of entrepreneurial activity was considered ‘dangerous’ to the government; • Many of the academy people still keep this attitude which makes the academic environment not supportive, sometimes even hostile to university-industry cooperation; • Many industry organisations neglect cooperation with universities since they are considered to mere producers of academic results that are largely inappropriate to real applications in industry; European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

‘Ten Commandments’ of an Entrepreneurial University Leader • Do not wait to be innovative until the steering core is strengthened. You’d better start an ‘underground entrepreneurial revolution’ rather than wait; • Do not expect the development periphery to be expanded. Expand it yourself! • Do not expect the funding base to be diversified. Diversify it yourself! • Do not stimulate the whole academic heartland. Stimulate only those who are willing to be involved and contribute; • Do not force building an integrated entrepreneurial culture in the whole organization. Gradually expand this culture by showing positive results and providing customized training; European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

‘Ten Commandments’ of an Entrepreneurial University Leader (2) • Do not put barriers between research, development, education and training but rather build multiple stable bridges between them; • Do not restrict international cooperation. Build a speedy highways for teachers and students mobility and transfer of scientific ideas, technology, know-how and business opportunities. Instead of stimulating the ‘brain-drain’ these measures can actually reduce it; • Do not consider projects as ‘frames’ but rather as ‘seeds’ to grow new projects, partnerships and cooperation lines and raise additional funds; • Build a stable infrastructure and a critical mass of people covering the whole life cycle of project development and exploitation of results; • Cooperate and build networks at any level – team, department, university, region, country, Europe, the whole world. Cooperation and networking is the winning strategy for any business today. This holds true for universities as well. European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Education and Training as a Meta-Industry • IDC predicts that the global corporate e-learning market would exceed $23.1 billion by 2004 (in 1999 it was $1.8 billion); • North America will account for 65.2% of the market by 2004 and Western Europe will be the fastest-growing market; • In 2000 the non-IT segment accounted for 24% of the market but it is expected to capture 53.8% by 2005; • Gardner predicts that e-Learning will be the most-used corporate application on the web by 2005; • in 2003 over 50% of all higher education institutions in the world will be offering e-Learning programmes to students; • e-Learning Industry segments: Content/Publishing; Tools/Enablers; Learning Service Providers (LSPs); Knowledge Hubs/Portals; Educational e-Tailers; • growing number of partnerships between e-Learning vendors and academic institutions to create ’virtual universities‘ online European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Development of the Bulgarian e-Learning Industry - Strategic Direction of the New Economy • This industry could be considered a ‘meta-industry’ since it could positively influence all other industry sectors; • It could become Bulgaria’s most important asset on its way to the Knowledge Economy; • Foreign direct investments (FDI) have radically changed the food and beverages sector, cement industry, non-ferrous metallurgy, wholesale trade and banking in Bulgaria; • FDI couldradically change the ’knowledge sector‘ of the industry which should be built around the real knowledge producers – universities and research institutions; • We might expect a radical change in building sustainable ‘university-industry-government’ partnerships; • A chance for Bulgaria to leap forward into the ‘knowledge economy’, and Sofia University is prepared to take a leading role. European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Some Estimated Achievements • a strengthened steering core – 50%; • an expanded developmental periphery – 70%; • a diversified funding base – 40%; • a stimulated academic heartland – 30%; • an integrated entrepreneurial culture – 15%. • CIST has helped the Department of IT stabilize its number of researchers and lecturers at 14 • attracted a stable core of more than 30 interdisciplinary researchers from other universities; • 2001 - 5 PhD students enrolled, in 2002- 10 PhD students; • 4FP – 4 projects; 5FP – 15 projects; 6FP – 2 projects; + several other, e.g. from WB • international partners - 15 in 1997, nearly 90 in 2003 • local partners - 5 in 1997, 150 in 2003 • 2 MSc programmes in 1997, 6 – in 2002 • New Faculty of Applied Sciences under Establishment - 4 BSc & 13 MSc Programmes envisaged. European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Thank you for your attention! European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

Good Entrepreneurship Practice at Sofia University

Good Entrepreneurship Practice at Sofia University

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