NEW DELHI, April 18: A close relationship among institutions, research and industry leads to vertical as well as horizontal growth of the entrepreneurial culture. An entrepreneur trained in the nuances of business can easily understand and deal with crisis situation. In most of the developed as well as the developing countries, small and medium enterprises working on this module are fast becoming the vehicle of growth. Some of the smaller states in countries throughout the globe are shifting their attention from large industries to small and medium sector.Schleswig-Holstein in Germany is one such state. Fritz Lucke, joint-secretary in the Ministry of economics of the state, says, "We have a close link between the institutions and business. In fact, the state's economy is now dominated by the SMEs and most of them took shape in the institutions itself."
The education system in the state caters to the various needs of the industry such as development of new or improved products, more efficient productionor distribution systems, shorter data or order processing time. The chain of innovation starts in the elementary school classrooms and stretches into its research laboratories and production facilities.
The state's chain of progress is further supported by numerous schools of professional and technical specialisation, vocational academies and institutes of further occupational education which provide the state's companies with a stream of highly-trained technical personnel and executives.
"The state's research community helps the industry in a big way," says Peter Janocha, head of International Economic Relations unit in the Ministry of economic Affairs, Technology and Transport of Schleswig-Holstein. The business community in the state takes keen interest in designing the entire post-secondary courses of study. According to a government report, the businessmen provide the key input for the Technical Faculty of the University of Keil which was founded in 1992 by helping in shaping its electronic,information and material processing technologies curricula.
Businesses also designed a number of ``innovation interfaces'' into the faculty. These interfaces are used by small and medium-sized companies wishing to avail themselves of the faculty's technological expertise.The report further states: "Technology Foundation (Technologiestiftung) Schleswig-Holstein has been entrusted with an important, fundamental responsibility--to facilitate technological change in Schleswig-Holstein. More specifically, this public sector foundation assists the scientific and business communities in the transformation of technological breakthroughs into marketable products."
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
