Director Velibor Bošković Participated in the Conference
In Budva, as part of the EU INO NET project “Promotion of Innovation Culture and Support for Cooperation between Science, Education, and Innovation Stakeholders,” a conference titled “Application of Innovations in Science and Industry in Montenegro” was held.

The main objective of the project is to improve collaboration between the scientific and business sectors in Montenegro by enhancing the portal www.naucnamreza.me,supporting small and medium enterprises in protecting intellectual property rights, and is co-financed by the Government of Montenegro and the European Union (EU).

Project Director of INO NET, Konard Nierubiec, stated that the global pandemic has once again confirmed that innovation management, technology transfer, and research development remain the main pillars of the EU. He added that they could not have achieved these results without excellent cooperation with all relevant institutions in Montenegro, such as the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Science, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Science and Technology Park of Montenegro.

“We believe that the services developed within this project will help companies in Montenegro to become more innovative and competitive in the local, regional, and EU markets,” said Nierubiec.

Tanja Radusinović, Director of the Project Sector at the Chamber of Commerce, emphasized that this is an important project for Montenegro’s economy.

“I believe we can be satisfied with the project’s results, especially since it was implemented under very challenging COVID-19 conditions, which prevented the planned way of carrying out activities. There is no doubt that even under these altered implementation conditions, significant contributions were made to the promotion of innovation and collaboration between science, education, and industry, as well as better understanding of intellectual property protection tools,” she said.

She added that the Chamber of Commerce was involved in improving intellectual property protection capacities and developing advisory services for diagnostics in this area.

She also noted that a public call has been opened for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises to offer free consultations in pre-diagnostics for intellectual property protection, which will provide free advisory support to selected enterprises on the potential of intellectual property for their business development.

The Chamber of Commerce, in cooperation with International Development Ireland, organized seven workshops in which representatives from more than 130 SMEs participated. Some of the workshop topics included the importance of intellectual property rights for SMEs, trademarks for SMEs, innovation patents, registration, and new trends.

Ivana Janković Mijanović, Head of the Department for European Integration, Programming, and Implementation of EU Funds at the Ministry of Economic Development, said that the Ministry manages and coordinates IPA funds aimed at strengthening the competitiveness and innovativeness of the private sector in Montenegro.

“The projects we implement are focused on achieving the criteria set for our future EU membership. To date, we have implemented more than 10 projects, and the INO NET project is one of the first,” said Janković-Mijanović.

She emphasized that the goal of this project is to connect science and business stakeholders and commercialize innovations. She mentioned that the Ministry has been intensively working on strengthening the legislative framework to encourage stakeholders from both science and business to engage in innovation and its commercialization.

“This project is doing just that through two segments. One is connecting university and business actors through the scientific network portal, and the other is working intensively on strengthening the capacity of enterprises for implementing intellectual property rights,” she said.

Director of the Science and Technology Park, Velibor Bošković, presented this important project as the central unit of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, as well as the legislative framework for developing an innovative economy in Montenegro. As he said, the potential of the innovation ecosystem in Montenegro is highly significant, but cooperation among all market stakeholders, particularly the government, private, and academic sectors, is crucial.

A large number of commercial companies, such as Arhimed, Marko Polo Travel Agency, Montenegrin Telecom, 3D Room, Oykos Development, presented their innovative solutions in daily business operations at the conference. The conference was also attended by representatives of ICT Cortex, DEV club, and several other companies from the real business sector.