Attendees of the entrepreneurial event Innowave preSummit 2021 – Varna Innovation Camp from Cluj-Napoca visited the University of Economics – Varna on 16 July 2021. They are members of the team of experts, admin officers and business representatives who have transformed Cluj-Napoca into one of the fastest growing innovative and progressive European centres. The European Commission considers this Romanian city an example of best practices.
Guests included, among others, Ms Emilia-Alina Botezan, Head of International Relations and Foreign Investment at Cluj-Napoca Municipality, Romania; Ms Plamena Marinova, Deputy Mayor of Varna Municipality; Mr Dimitar Vassilev, Chair of the Managing Board of the Bulgarian Business Forums.
Prof. Dr. Evgeni Stanimirov, the Rector of University of Economics – Varna, outlined the university profile and entrepreneurial initiatives, some of which have gained international recognition. The other speakers at the meeting were Assoc. Prof. Radan Miryanov, UE – Varna Vice Rector for Internationalization, Dr. Ilin Dimitrov, Director of UE – Varna Centre for Careers, Entrepreneurship and Marketing, Ms Miroslava Ivanova, Head of UE – Varna Project Management Taskforce. They highlighted entrepreneurship partnering opportunities in the region and the Romanian representatives expressed their interest in pursuing them.
Prof. Evgeni Stanimirov was a speaker at the Innowave preSummit 2021 - Varna Innovation Camp, an entrepreneurship event hosted in Varna under the motto Varna – City of Knowledge from 15 to 17 July. Addressing the participants at the event, he focused on several key points: 1. The educational system, the economy, and societies are undergoing transformation, and we need to acknowledge the end result of it and its cost; 2. To multiply the effect of resources utilization, we need to apply a ‘strong adhesive’ called ‘sharing’ of ideas and resources; 3. The dynamics of processes often takes over our ability to respond; 4. Does it make sense for digitization to incorporate an ‘up-down’ approach along with the ‘down-up’ approach? 5. Should the educational system be reengineered ‘inside-out’?
Prof. Dr. Evgeni Stanimirov discussed more ideas in the panel discussion on Innovation in Education: 1. We must be very careful when we talk about digitalization, transformation, innovation, because the money spent there should correlate with the deliverables; 2. AI development should not take over the development of natural intelligence, because technologies are nothing without people; 3. Young people are not interested in educational policies and strategies, they are excited about us providing them career tracks and holistic development; 4. Internationalization is a tool to help put know-how transfer on the fast track and it is a means of providing development of scale for of start-ups.
Innowave preSummit 2021 – Varna Innovation Camp is the follow-up event to Innovation Camp 2020 Cluj-Napocca. The 2020 event was co-organised by StartupCity Varna and it was the first stage of the Innowave Summit.
The highlights of the two-day partnership forum between Varna and Cluj-Napoca included digital transformation, life-long learning, and tourism development. Cluj-Napoca is an outstanding European example of innovation, investment, start-ups, youth, business, education, medicine, tourism, urban environment and sports.
The 2018 Innowave preSummit was part of the programme of activities of the Bulgarian presidency of the European Union that year. As a result of that first edition, Varna has become the first Bulgarian city with its own strategy and action plan for regional digitalization.
21 Jul 2021
