iasi county itc

8/11/2019 Iasi County ITC

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Destination:

competitiveness in IT&C

Bridging the gap between Academia and Industry in Romania

Challenges and ways to narrow the gapEconomic Forum, Krynica-Zdroj, September 3rd , 2014

Iași County



SUMMARY

Who we are?

What we have to offer?

What we want?

Quality of life

Skilled humanresources

Business infrastructureand opportunties

Youth anddynamism

North-East Region, ROMANIA - Open to innovation



Location and demographics.North-East Region

6 counties (Iași, Bacău, Botoșani, Neamț,

Suceava and Vaslui)

North-East Region economic catchment

area includes part of the neighbour counties

(Vrancea, Galați), Republic of Moldavia and a

part of Ukraine (over 5 million inhabitants)

3.8 million inhabitants (17.30% of total

Romanian’s population); 56.3% in rural areas

37.000 km² surface

Regional GDP – USD 12.26 million,

contribution of 11.8% to Romania’s GDP

Romania

South-Eastern Europe



Location and demographics.Iași County

0,87 million inhabitants: 44.7% in the urban

area and 55.3% in the rural area (the second most

populated county in Romania, after Bucharest)

5.476 km² surface (2.3% from the Romanianterritory, of which 69.45% is agricultural land,

17.81% woods and forest land area, 2.54% water

and ponds and 10.19% lands with other destination)

2 municipalities (Iași and Pașcani), 3 towns and

93 communes

IS




Economy

Iasi county is predominantly agricultural, due to its topography.

Industry is concentrated in the cities.

The principal industries are:

Software

Pharmaceuticals Automotive

Metallurgy and heavy-equipment manufacturing

Electronics & Electrotechnics

Textiles

Food production




Facilities for investors

Dynamic and friendly public administration:Iași County Council and Local Councils (identification of lands, buildings,urbanism-related documentation, authorizations for constructions, local fiscal facilities).

County Agency for Labor Force Employment for creation of new jobs; National Agency for Private Small-Medium Enterprises in Romania (www.animmc.ro);

Banks and credit facilities; Department for Infrastructure Projects and Forein Investments

( http://www.dpiis.ro/ )

Romanian legislation provides tax exemption for IT programmers.


http://www.dpiis.ro/

http://www.dpiis.ro/



Regional educational and business

infrastructure

EDUCATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE:

Human resources – key-factor in the development of regional economies.

North-East Region provides excellence education at all levels, the number of students

enrolled in tertiary and university study programs exceeding 770,000/year

(representing 17,95% of the national total, cf. 2011).The academic centers in the Region (7 public and 4 private universities) educate more

than 78,000 students.

INDUSTRIAL PARKS – authorized in the counties of Neamț, Botoșani and Bacău.

18 BUSSINES CENTERS AND BUSINESS INCUBATORS – spread across the entire Region

(out of which 9 – in the county of Iași).

TEHNOPOLIS Science and Technology Park – county of Iași.

TRANSAGROPOLIS Agroindustrial Park, Lețcani, county of l Iași.

IAȘI INDUSTRIAL PARK – ONGOING PROJECT




Building a sustainable future: Industrial Park – Lețcani, Iași

Main road connections: DN28 (E583), DJ248A, DJ248.

Railway connections with other functional areas of the country.

Iaşi International Airport - 15 km away.

Main advantages:

► the presence of a major investor in the area (Delphi DieselSystems Romania);

► utilities available.Impact:

► new jobs;

► boost investment in the area;

► stable labour force.

Estimated value: USD 43,6 million.

Expected funding sources:

capital contribution; loans from

banks and other financial

institutions; concessions in advanceand PPP.

April 2014: Starting of the execution

of the Zonal Urban Plan (30 ha).

Mai 2014: Legal registration of the

Industrial Park Management Company.

Open for business

Iași IndustrialPark, Lețcani

Iași

InternationalAirport

•Initiator and main shareholder: Iași County Council.

Partner: Local Council of Lețcani, Iași County.



Clustering potential in the Region

• The Study Clusters and Potential Clusters in Romania. A Mapping

exercise (2010) shows that in the North-East Region it is appropriate to

developing clusters in industries such as textiles, bio-medicine, pharmacy,

tourism, IT&C etc.

• The following elements were taken into account to identify the

clustering potential:

• Concentration of companies;

• Existence of RDI units;

• Workforce quality;

• Traditions of cooperation;

• Existence of a critical mass of third services providers.




IT&C development potential

• Subsidiaries of

multinational companies.

• Highly qualified

workforce.

• High potential

development activities in

North-East Region:

IT&Telecom

BPO

backoffice

outsourcing

technology transfer

and research. North-East Region, ROMANIA - Open to innovation



R OMANIAN IT&C INDUSTRY

The last decade was very beneficial for the Romanian IT&C industry: the number of companies

tripled to 11.000, as well as the number of employees (60.000 in 2010 only for the software segment).

In 2012, Romania was included in the World’s Top 10 Outsourcing Destinations (Business supplement

of The Times Magazine) – 6th place.

PROs:

Although Romania cannot hope to rival much larger countries such as India, China or Russia in

terms of breadth of expertise across application development, we do excel in use and development

of new technologies and offer strong software development methodologies and processes.

geographical proximity to Western Europe;

Strategic location: at the crossing of 3 pan European transport corridors, the Eastern border of theinland EU and at the turning point where EU meets the Balkans and CIS countries.

Cost advantage compared to Central Europe;

Membership of the European Union (unlike most of the Eastern Europe countries) – ease of travel,

visit and staff deployment;

Particularly strong language skills of both management and technical staff (English, French,

German, Italian). North-East Region, ROMANIA - Open to innovation



Fact files:

• Iasi – the 2nd city of Romania (by number of inhabitants);

• Strategic location - in the North‐Eastern part of Romania, on the EU Eastern border

with the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine;

• 5 public universities (3 of them ranked as A - advance research and educationinstitutions by the Romanian Ministry of Education);

• Large number of students/year: 55.000 – 60.000, out of which:

– IT&C specialities: more than 1400 Bachelor degree, 450 Master degree and

200 Ph.D. graduates/year.

• Highly qualified labour force;

• Excellent language skills: English, French, German, Italian, Arabic.

I ASI IT&C INDUSTRY



• Office Buildings and

Facilities for Investors - Iasi

has an office premises stock

of over 100,000 m2, of

which at least 70,000 m2

are of A/B + class standard.

• Approximately 6,000

employees in Iasi County

work in IT&C companies.

• Total turnover 2011 ‐ $ 130

million.

• Companies - 734

companies in Iasi in IT&Cindustry.

IASI IT&C INDUSTRY: POTENTIAL AND OPPORTUNITIES



Regional Innovative Cluster

EURONEST IT&C HUB

March 2013: call for

participation in the Strategic

Council of the Cluster

(personalities from the

political, economic, academic

and cultural environment);

May 14th, 2013: official

signing of the Constitutive

Documents of the Regional

Innovative Cluster.




Area: North-East Region, counties of Iași, Bacău, Botoșani, Neamț, Suceava and Vaslui.

Business Sector: software and services; information technology and communications;

CAEN codes : MAIN - Software and IT Services.

Founders:

• PUBLIC AUTHORITIES:

- EURONEST Intercommunity Development Association – county councils of Iași, Bacău, Botoșani,Neamț, Suceava, Vaslui;

- Iași City Hall.

• 12 IC&T SMEs

(SC Centric IT Solutions Romania SRL, SC Dicode SRL, SC Embarcadero Technologies SRL, SC Entreprise

Business Systems SRL, SC Focality SRL, SC GreenSoft SRL, SC Intelligent Bee Web SRL, SC NESS Romania

SRL, SC RomSoft SRL, SC Software Vision Business SRL, SC The Red Point SA, SC Travel Tech SRL)• 4 UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS

(„Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Iași ,„Gh. Asachi” Technical University, Iași, 1Vasile Alecsandri”

University, Bacău, „Ștefan cel Mare” University, Suceava)

• NGOs, BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS

• OTHER COMPANIES IN RELATED FIELDS

President: Adrian Brezulianu, GreenSoft SRL


EURONEST IT&C HUB




EURONEST IT&C HUB

0

5000000

10000000

15000000

20000000

25000000

30000000

35000000

40000000

45000000 2010 2011 2012

Evolution of turnover (LEI) of SMEs activating in the SOFTWARE AND IT

SERVICES industry within the EURONEST IT&C HUB

Total turnover of SMEs in the cluster was about EUR 17,3 in 2010, followed by a slight increase

of 1,57% in 2012 and reaching EUR 21,6 million in 2012, which represents an increase of over

23% compared to 2010.

Total number of employees of the

cluster members exceeds 5,000

people. An increase of at least 15% is

expected for 2013, a trend that is

expected to be continued in 2014,

with a jump to 20-205%.




Actions in progress

Beyond the current services offered to members, the cluster entity has already implemented

some important actions :

• Project aiming to develop new modern IC&T study programs and to deliver joint study

programs (undergraduate and master level) in foreign languages (budget: € 500,000 );

• Financing awarded to Increase of the competitiveness of the Regional Innovative Cluster

EURONEST IT&C HUB and enhancement of interactions among cluster members for the

development of high technology products and services, with a total budget of EUR 800,000

(only 20 of the 46 existing clusters submitted projects within this 1st national call);

• the project has two components for industrial research, jointly developed by SMEs and

universities in the cluster: (1) TACT - The development of new assistive technologies for

communication and telesupervision with neurolocomotor severely disabled and (2)SisConGes - Developing a reconfigurable system for intelligent building control and

manage the use of energy from renewable sources.

• included in the European Cluster Observatory;

• IT&C selected as one of the 4 priority industries in the Regional Smart Specialization

Strategy.




InterUniversitas –

the most important educational project for Iasi

Strategic objective: Setting up RDI as the foundation of the sustainable

development of Iași and Moldova, based on new added-value products and

technologies, in order to consolidate the city of Iași as the Development Pole of

Romania.

Project key-elements:

•setting up of a consortium of state universities, sharing educational andbusiness resources;

• donation of land, by the Iasi County Council;

• developing of a new campus of the consortium in Copou, with separate

spaces for teaching, research and accomodation for each university and a dining

room, multipurposes gym and at least one building to be jointly use by members:

•creating, in this common building, of joint facilities for teaching, exhibition,multifunctional (multi- and inter-disciplinary) workshops ;

• development of research and technology transfer centers , at least in the

field of IT, medicine and engineering .

• attracting large multinational companies in the campus to develop academic-

business partnerships. Based on the advantages of this partnership, these

companies will develop new facilities for research, production and services thus

ensuring the technology transfer. North-East Region, ROMANIA - Open to innovation



Is Academia meeting Romanian economic needs?

• Education boom - phenomenal growth in the number ofstudents and higher education institutions.

– During 1990-2008 the number of graduates has increased morethan 8 times.

– new forms of education were developed, including the creation ofprivate sector education (more than 80 private higher educationinstitutions created).

– The improvement and growth of educational opportunities hasincreased the attractiveness of RO as a location for foreigninvestments. A well-educated and cost-competitive workforce isregarded as one of the strong points of the Romanian economy.





Quality of the boom

• Despite the increased number of graduates, RO is facing growing concerns about the quality

of the education they receive.

– Growth in the number of students has not been accompanied by similar growth in

research and lecturing potential.

– The ratio of the number of students to academic lecturers has been steadily increasing

from 10 in the beginning of the 1990s to almost 32 nowadays, one of the highest in

Europe (exceptional cases: 141 students/professor in some private universities).

– Therefore, the inflow of new staff to the universities is limited while its load has

increased, which has to have an impact on the quality of the educational process.

– The success of RO students in international tournaments (e.g. IT coding) cannot hide thefact that universities have not improved their position in international rankings.

– Spending on education has increased significantly in recent years. Its structure can be,

however, discouraging as only a relatively small fraction is being spent on education

infrastructure.

– RO has not been able to turnaround a negative trend in R&D expenditures (below 0.3%,

the lowest in the European Union).




Low cooperation between Academia and Industry

• Macro level analyses indicate that the gap between industry and academia is rather

increasing than decreasing.

• RO is on the low end of the EU with regards to the private share in R&D financing

(12% in 2008).

• The share of enterprises of foreign origin in total R&D expenditures amounts to

almost 60%.

• Only 400 industrial enterprises in RO had contracted relations with higher

education institutions.

• Industry-academia cooperation is a priority of the European Commission,

addressed not only by the Lisbon strategy or Bologna process but also by a

dedicated platform in the University-Business Forum.

• Thanks to its academic potentials, RO and Iasi, the cultural capital of Romania, are

well suited to take a more proactive role in this process.




Low cooperation between Academia and Industry

• In a survey published in 2006 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, conductedamong 200 multinational firms on factors impacting R&D location decisions, fivemajor factors were identified for investing in emerging economies: – the domestic market’s growth potential;

– quality of R&D personnel; – costs (net of tax breaks);

– the expertise of university faculty;

– ease of collaborating with universities.

• The study confirms the importance of soft factors impacting location decisions,such as the ease and willingness of cooperation (which are key factors in settingup cooperation forms, such as clusters).





Risks and costs of the low cooperation between Academia and Industry

1. limited knowledge transfer from business to academia, leading to the “aging” of

the knowledge of academic staff and generating graduates with limited

knowledge of the newest technologies;

2. lack of practical aspects of education, which leads to a low graduates’ attractiveness for potential employers;

3. skills shortages which may cause investors to invest outside of RO;

4. increased business costs to “retrain” newly hired graduates, especially in the IT

industry;

5. inability of RO science to cooperate with industry, which may negatively impact

its presence in EU funded projects aimed at joint industry-science consortia;

6. further decrease of private financing for RO R&D; which will not only harm the

R&D sector, but also the enterprise sector, specifically SMEs, which do not have

their own R&D potential.



Ways to narrow the gap between Academia and Industry

1. Industry observes skills shortages, primarily in the technical fields.

2. Education quality is deteriorating and does not match industry needs.

3. Industry-academia cooperation is not intensive, however, there is willingness to

improve it (i.e. clusters, networks etc.).

4. The general climate for industry-academia cooperation in RO is worse than in

other countries.

5. Low quality of research and not understanding business needs are key barriers for

establishing cooperation.

6. Industry lacks good information about the quality and potential of academia.

7. Government should engage more actively in direct and indirect support of

industry-academia cooperation.

8. Bureaucracy and not understanding business needs are key barriers for

establishing cooperation.




Thank you for your attention!

Alina Popa, Ph.D.

executive director,

Regional Innovative Cluster EURONEST IT&C HUB

Al.I.Cuza University, Iasi

www.adieuronest.ro, www.icc.ro

[email protected]


http://www.adieuronest.ro/

http://www.icc.ro/

mailto:[email protected]



http://www.icc.ro/

http://www.adieuronest.ro/