innovation

In Johannesburg, South Africa, there are a small but growing number of shared office spaces in which sole proprietors and small businesses rent a desk and other services. For small business owners and start-up companies, this route not only provides cheaper overhead for workspace, but it also helps entrepreneurs network. The OPEN Collaborative Workspace is on the fourth floor of a building in an artsy, up and coming area just south of downtown Johannesburg, in a neighborhood called Maboneng.

Colombia’s Minister of Commerce Sergio Diaz-Granados welcomed a Singaporean mission of entrepreneurs to explore potential in innovation, sustainable development, IT, agribusiness and the hydrocarbon sectors. Yet most of Singapore’s business interest, according to the Ministry, falls within the services sector, like tech and BPOs.

Over the past decade, Slovakia has reformed its taxation, healthcare, pension, and social welfare systems, attracting large inflows of foreign investment into the automobile and electronic sectors, and becoming Central Europe’s first country to adopt the euro in January, 2009. But Europe’s economic woes have slowed growth. The Slovak government believes it must forge ahead finding new and innovative sources of growth - particularly on the Internet.

May 8, 2013

Science and technology diplomacy between China and South-East Asian (SEA) countries is expected to benefit both sides, according to a forthcoming OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) report. Rising research and development (R&D) investment on both sides — as well as a common drive towards economic growth and industrialisation — increases the opportunities for improving collaboration, especially on science, innovation and education, the report says.

The European Patent Office is a great European success that should be seen not only as a centre for patent granting excellence, but also as a means of generating European soft power across the world. So says the office’s current president Benoît Battistelli.

When China embraced the world with its opening-up policy and extraordinary economic growth, the Awakening Dragon had embarked on a golden journey to transform itself, from being labor-intensive to being knowledge-intensive, from rising dependently on the growth of hard power to a full-blown renaissance of soft power, from the crude, cut-price "Made in China" to an imaginably refined, top-notch "Created in China".

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