Entrepreneur: a new business gate to reduce barriers between universities and entrepreneurs

More than 600 representatives of businesses, public sector organizations and universities gathered in Tartu for Estonia’s biggest higher education institutions and enterprises cooperation festival to find points of cooperation to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises. In the academic and entrepreneurs cooperation gate ADAPTER that was for the first time publicly introduced, entrepreneurs saw the potential in overcoming the barrier of communication and cooperation between universities and enterprises.

The representative of Bestra Engineering AS Andero Väljaots who participated in the cooperation festival organized by six public universities “At the right time at the right place!”, said that so far, universities have been perceived rather as inaccessible institutes i.e. enterprises are not sufficiently aware of what opportunities universities offer for cooperation.

“In terms of the future, ADAPTER is an imperative part to ensure the sustainability and competitiveness of companies. As the next step, it is essential to bring the existence and opportunities of the platform to the entrepreneurs’ consciousness. The advantage of this platform to an entrepreneur is definitely its compactness; there is one environment with six universities, to whom an entrepreneur can turn basically with one query. So far, the obstacle has been, perhaps, that often entrepreneurs did not know who and which university to contact, but this business environment makes the barrier between enterprises and universities much smaller.”

The University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn University, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonian Academy of Arts and Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre researchers held speeches on the cooperation festival about their ideas and cooperation points, which could improve the competitiveness of the company or public sector organization or to support its development. For the first time, they held their speeches in the form of a lift speech.

The festival was also visited by a representative of Veskimeister OÜ Andres Hellenurme, whose company offers cooperation for farmers in the animal feeding sphere. He came to the festival to find new solutions to develop his business and to find contact with universities. From the lift speeches he listened to, he found food for thought and the most practical value from two presentations.

From the perspective of his sphere, valuable information was that the Estonian University of Life Sciences has established an economic work desk reflecting the economic situation of milk production, which gives an overview of manufacturing performance, allows comparing the results with colleagues anonymously and thus respond to the changes in the market.

Secondly, he highlighted the neuromarketing service of the Chair of Marketing of Tartu University, where emotion measuring and eye-tracking technologies allow creating marketing materials that are more attractive and more noticeable to customers.

The cooperation festival held on October 6, 2016, at the Estonian National Museum was organized by the University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn University, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonian Academy of Arts and Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre.

See the recording of the cooperation festival, including all lift speeches at UTTV