Romania - Technology and Innovation a Possibility

The government of Romania has recognized the need for an increase in government involvement in the creation of a strong innovation economy and has spent significant resource in developing paths for commercialization of technologies developed in the country.

Report on ROMANIAN LEGISLATIONS AND POLICIES TO SPEED UP THE COMMERCIALIZATION FROM SCIENCE LABS TO BUSINESS WORLD.

Romanian legislation regarding author and copyrights on Internet:

Romanian legislature has chosen as the main protection system for computer program. The law concerning authors’ rights and other related rights come into force on March 26, 1996 and contain a new category of protection – the protection of computer program. The Romanian Copyright Law stipulates that the only person entitled to make copies of the protected materials is the author. Such provision is applicable also for the downloaded materials. Consequently, any kind of copy of computer programs without having the consent of the author is an infringement of the author right.

The World Bank, a government fund, funded a program to promote business innovation and private sector development. Its goals include fostering the establishment and incubation of information and communication technology(ICT) based start-ups, especially those based in Romanian universities and research institutions; enhancing the capabilities of participating incubators to facilitate the development and expansion of ICT-based venture; creating and improving networks in the key areas of science and technology, entrepreneurship and funding; and fostering strategic alliances that can link to similar networks around the globe. The program also included a workshop, “Technology Commercialization: An integrated, international perspective” which was presented in Bucharest.

Report on Initiatives and Innovation

Romanian Information Technology Initiative:

Implemented by Internews Network, Inc., this initiative worked with a several Romanian Government offices including the national telecommunications regulator and the Ministry of Communication Information Technology, the ICT Business sector and several civil society organizations to work on Information Communication Technology policy issues for Romania.

Entrepreneur Factory Initiative:

Developed by Career center, a Romania organization aiming to help students and recent graduates to start a career, this initiative’s goal is to develop students’ entrepreneurial skills, the specific objective is to encourage a success-oriented attitude based on five key elements: integrity, focus, responsibility-taking, creativity and self-confidence. This program is innovative because it promises not only to aim to transform young aspiring entrepreneur’s perception of the market but also their self-perception. At the end of the program, each participant will need to create a business plan and a reward of $1500 will be given to the one with the best business plan. This award is meant to allow the winner to put his ideas into practice.

This initiative is a positive step towards achieving a more equitable business environment because it provides actual guidance to young aspiring entrepreneurs, and also because the involvement of academic is an acknowledgement of the vital role of proper education. This is very important especially because the Romanian society has been witnessing a substantial decline in the quality of schooling, along with a very low emphasis on the connection between getting a good education and achieving success.

IT Girls – Great careers for great women Initiative:

This initiative is taken by European Commission to convey the message that rewarding career opportunities in the ever-growing domain of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) exist for both men and women. It is to encourage young girls to choose a career in the ICT sector.

Romanian Innovation report:

Romania international ranking in terms of competitiveness show some weaknesses and innovation is one of them.

The most recent data that refers to Romanian innovation performance were collected from 12,232 enterprises with over 10 employees, throughout the industry and selected services. The response rate was 82.9% and the statistical research results are guaranteed with a 3% probability error. The results of this research are underlining a low level of innovation performance but with a improved trend. These issues demonstrate the necessity of a stimulating economic and law framework for the innovation in the Romanian enterprises.

The percent of innovative Romanian enterprises in the total number of enterprises is low (21.1%) comparing with EU 27% average, but the trend registered an increasing evolution ( 17% to 21.1% in 7 years from 2000 to 2006). That shows an improvement of economic framework in Romania. More than that, one of the main objectives of the Research, Development and Innovation National Strategy for 2007-2013 periods presumes to double the percent of innovative enterprises in 2013.

This percentage places Romania ranked 23 out of 27 EU members and the first ranked is Germany with 63% enterprises being innovative.

From the innovative enterprises, 71.62% had both product innovation and process innovation, 19.58% had only process innovation and 8.80% had only product innovation.

A percent of 46.3% from total number of enterprises have developed organizational innovation or marketing innovation through the implementation of changes in enterprise structure or in managerial methods, or by implementation of new or improved concepts or methods of selling products.

In Romania, the enterprises from industrial field have proved to be more innovative than those of services: 63% of all innovative enterprises were from industrial field and only 37% were in services.

14.1% of all innovative enterprises belong to a group of companies, more than half of them based abroad.

The enterprises from services field spend more on research and development than those from industrial. Only a percentage of 13.3% of innovative enterprises received public funding for innovative activities.

Romanian enterprises spent 1.3% of their turnover on innovation activities, while European countries enterprises spent much more on innovation activities: in Estonia 3.8%, Sweden 3.3% and Germany 2.9%

The structure of innovation expenditures has the following components:

• the main part of innovation expenditures was allocated to machines, installations, equipment and software (74.9%)
• other destinations for innovation expenditures refers to licenses, patents, unpatented inventions, know-how (2.4%), internal research & development (19.5%) and research & development from other enterprises (3.2)

The main way to cooperate between research and production fields is the National RDI programs and direct RDI acquisitions. The provenience country enterprises distribution was: 60% cooperation between Romanian enterprises, 32% cooperation with European enterprises and 8% cooperation with USA and other countries.

Financial issues are the main problem of innovation in Romanian enterprises. The results of statistical research in 2004-2006 underline that for 30.9% of innovative enterprises the innovative activity blockade was equally caused by lack of own funds and external financing. Non-innovative enterprises have indicated that the main brake on the lack of funding for innovation (30.4%) and enterprise innovation costs too high (26.8%)

The largest share of innovative enterprises is held by the North-east and the South-east development regions (34.7%), followed by the North-West and Central regions (20.7%) then by Muntenia South and Bucharest-Ilfov regions (16.8%) and by the South-west Oltenia and West region (12.1%).

The employee’s number implied in research, development and innovation activities in Romania is very low and the average of age of these employees is increasing.

Only 40.3% of all Romanian staff is working in innovative enterprises, while in Germany this proportion is nearly 86%

The Romanian enterprises pay a very low attention to protect the intellectual property rights by patents. Only 15.#% of innovative enterprises and 2.5% of the non-innovative enterprises have applied for mark registration. 6.4% of innovative enterprises and only 1% of non-innovative enterprises asked for invention patents.

National Strategy for Research, Development and Innovation for 2007-2013 is underlining the increases of intellectual property rights importance through a large number of registered patents. The main objectives stipulate the growth of number of European patents by 10 times in 2013 and the growth of number of Romanian patents registered by OSIM ( Patent National Romanian Office ) by 3 times in 2013.