News from the Commission on Business Cooperation

In-between the yearly meetings several bilateral or multilateral meetings take place covering more in detail subjects of particular interest for the members involved. Vaxjo has, for example, organised such meetings with Kolding, Kaunas and Tampere on subjects related to Science Parks, Science Centres, IT Clusters, Shopping Centres, city attractiveness as a business development factor, etc. Some of these visits and discussions have led to EU project proposals.

Tampere's project
Tampere, when chairing the Commission, was asked to organise a project: Developing a Technology Park and Business Incubator Concept in Lithuanian Cities. The overall aim behind the project was to promote and support innovative entrepreneurship in the cities of Klaipeda and Panevezys by improving the services of existing regional support structures, new business development services developed for research-based and technology-oriented small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-up entrepreneurs.

Klaipeda Regional Development Agency was the project leader and the Baltic Institute of Finland was the Finnish coordinator. Financed by PHARE CBC Small Project Fund (Lithuania), the kick-off meeting was held in Klaipeda on April 6, 2004 and the last meeting was held in September. There are currently discussions going on regarding a continuation of the project.

The Commission's meeting in Vaxjo
The meeting, chaired by the Chairman Lennart Gardmark was held at the Vaxjo University Campus on 10-12 June 2004 gathering representatives from 15 cities.

The presentations covered subjects such as:

• Videum Science Park,
  
• Vaxjo City Branding,
  
• InternetCity, the regional IT Cluster, and Web Service Competence Center,
  
• BioEnergy Smaland - Expo Vaxjo, the regional bioenergy export clusters: city, university and companies,
  
• Vaxjo University,
  
• Swedish Business Incubators, Swedish Industrial Design,
  
• Young Entrepreneurs,
  
• Accelerators versus Incubators.

During the second day other subjects were discussed and representatives of visiting cities made very interesting presentations. It was also emphasised that the city planning is a rather important factor for business development. The new members gave introductory information about their cities. The City of Tallinn extended an invitation to the 2005 meeting and the main themes of that event were already discussed. Turku declared its willingness to host the meeting in 2006.