Enterprise Estonia to support ten projects related to export, product development and digitalization and creative industry with more than half a million euros. “It is a pleasure to see than the design contest that has been organised for the first time has fully justified itself. The contest received many brilliant initiatives and I am convinced that many Estonian companies will also benefit from all the supported projects in the long run. For the success of the Estonian economy, it is very important that we have strong professional associations, which the presented projects undoubtedly verified,” Director of Grant Centre of Enterprise Estonia

In the second round of Enterprise Estonia’s Applied Research Program, 30 projects received support in the total amount of 19.4 million euros. The distribution of funding covers many different topics from biotechnology and medicine to plastics recycling, smart aircraft interiors, maritime traffic monitoring and innovative security scanning of various opaque objects. According to Minister of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology Andres Sutt, the Applied Research Program helps companies with formulating, finding suitable cooperation partners for, financing and launching knowledge-intensive R&D work. “Through the Applied Research Program, the state helps Estonian companies to develop new smart and technology-intensive products and services that

This is the eighth edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), which provides a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of EU Member States, under the EU Lisbon Strategy. The methodology for the 2008 EIS is revised compared to that of 2007 with a stronger focus on services, non-technological aspects, and outputs of innovation. The analysis of trends over time is now based on changes in the absolute values of the indicators over a five year period, rather than the previous approach of measuring trends relative to the EU average. The EIS 2008 includes innovation indicators and trend analyses for

Estonia and Finland are very close to each other both as states and nations. At almost all levels and sectors of society, the relations between the two countries are exceptionally intense. Very likely, the relations would have evolved to the point at which they are today even without any additional push given by the Estonian and Finnish governments. Even so, in 2002 Prime Ministers Paavo Lipponen and Siim Kallas held that it could be useful to examine the bilateral relations in a less unorthodox manner and explore the potential shared future outlook in view of the time when both countries

Estonia is striving to become an innovation-driven economy by making leverage on available resources such as: a highly educated population, good research institutions in advanced sectors, well prepared and motivated public administration, good economic and logistic links with neighbouring countries (especially with the Scandinavian region). Aware of existing shortcomings, the public administration has designed and put in place a system aimed at speeding up and supporting the process of knowledge and technology development and valorisation in the view of transforming these resources into commercially exploitable assets. Such a system has already been operational and has produced appealing results. However, it

The United Arab Emirates is a federal country with seven emirates, the biggest being Abu Dhabi and Dubai; Abu Dhabi is also the capital of the country. The Emirates were united in 1971 and there has been substantial development, particularly since the mid-90s in economic and other terms. Foreign policy and defence policy are common for all the emirates, but the individual emirates enjoy substantial independence in their own governance and law. The economy of the UAE is largely based on oil and other related industries, but there is great variation between the emirates in their dependency on petroleum-based industries,