MaltaMedia.com

The EU’s Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) Malta National Contact Point, and the Enterprise Europe Network have organized on Wednesday 18th February an international conference entitled ‘ICT, clustering and other networking frameworks: Exploiting their potential to boost competitiveness, innovation and sustainable growth’.

The event provided a local forum for debate and best practices sharing between the local private sector, the local public sector and key international ICT companies, amongst others Nokia and Cisco. The event also introduced the European Network of Living Labs to the local scene, including two recently certified Maltese Living Labs: EuroMedITI and the Living Lab Malta.

The speakers included international innovation professionals representing amongst others various ICT multinationals from different countries like Finland, Israel, Italy, Hungary, Oman and Spain, as well as various local experts from the public and private sector, who gave in-depth presentations with how innovation, clustering and the use of ICT can be deployed to increase competitiveness in a sustainable way.

Entrepreneurs, innovators, business, academia, public administration and civil society representatives had the occasion to establish direct communication channels, network and set the basis for further collaborations and joint projects between local and international partners. The full-day conference generated much interest amongst the local information officers from both public and private sector, representatives of companies active in the ICT industry and in other sectors related to sustainable energy use and urban development, pharmaceuticals, health-care, and the like.

Malta, like the whole of Europe, is facing the need to reshape its economy and society to meet the challenges brought about by the globalisation of markets and ever faster pace of technological change today. Economic growth has to be speeded-up through higher productivity, innovativeness and competitiveness, but in a manner that ensures a sustainable and rational use of resources. Both economic growth and sustainability are better served through the wider uptake and optimum use of ICT by citizens, businesses and public administrations. ICT is today becoming more and more pervasive and an integral part of everything we do, leading to a paradigm shift in how today’s economy and society function.

Further information, including the presentations and background information about the speakers can be obtained from the CIP Malta National Contact Point website at www.cipmalta.com.

The CIP Malta National Contact Point, set-up un late 2007 within the Malta Investment Management Co. Ltd. (MIMCOL), has as main roles to promote and disseminate information about the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme and its various sub-programmes; encourage and guide the local community’s participation; provide partner searches as well as facilitating a collaborative framework contributing to the development of synergies across the three pillars of the CIP programme. All this is done through the NCP’s website, regular briefs, stakeholder meetings and national information sessions.

The European Union CIP programme encourages the competitiveness of European enterprises. With small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as its main target, the programme supports innovation activities, providing better access to finance and delivering business support services in the regions. It encourages a better take-up and use of information and communications technologies (ICT) and helps to develop the information society. It also promotes the increased use of renewable energies and energy efficiency. The programme runs from 2007 to 2013 with a total budget of about €3.6billion.