Between 2-4 May, the delegation from one of the founding members of Business & Innovation Network (BIN@), from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), made a visit to Tallinn, Estonia in order to approach different actors and entities of Tallinn’s Research & Innovation ecosystem.
The stay in Tallinn kicked off with a visit to Estonian Business and Innovation Agency on 2 May. There, at the e-Estonia Briefing Centre, at-a-glance introduction was made to the underlying mechanisms of digitising the Estonian society (main challenges and policies, overview about infrastructure, e-solutions and services available, accompanied by examples from major success stories). A visit was also paid to the International House of Estonia, a substructure of the above-referred Agency where the FEUP delegation met with its Head in order to get acquainted with the good practices that Estonia implements with respect to attracting and retaining the highly-skilled and qualified international talent. For this aim, the ‘Work in Estonia’ and ‘e-Residency’ programmes were also introduced.
One of the main aims of this business mission, however, was to visit TTK University of Applied Sciences (TTK UAS) that is a partner of the project ‘INVENTHEI: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in HEIs’, led by FEUP and funded under the ‘EIT HEI Initiative: Innovation Capacity Building for Higher Education’. During the full day spent at the premises of TTK UAS on 3 May, a project-related workshop titled ‘Sharing Best Practices in Innovation & Entrepreneurship’ was carried out along with other exciting activities that included, among others, visiting the R&D infrastructures of the two institutes of the university.
HIGHLIGHT: The visit to TTK UAS also brought along a very positive and tangible result, i.e. as of May 2022, TTK UAS is the newest member and associated partner of Business & Innovation Network (BIN@)
But the day did not end there, in the evening of the same day, a visit to the software, design and data services company located in Tallinn, PROEKSPERT, was made. There, an alumnus of FEUP presented the enterprise and its main areas of activities (where he carries out the roles of Business Developer & Partner). Also the evening was wrapped up with a dinner in the company of FEUP alumni, working/living in Tallinn.
The mission ended with yet another noticeable activity. Namely, on 4 May an active day was spent at the premises of Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), which is already a partner of FEUP under various international projects and also the CESAER network. At TalTech, meetings were organised with Vice-Rector for Research, Vice-Rector for Entrepreneurship and with the Dean of the School of Engineering, likewise, further sessions took place with the representatives of Research Administration Office and Technology Transfer Office. These meetings were accompanied by the guided tour to TalTech Innovation and Business Centre Mektory, to Robotics Democentre and by the presentation of TalTech autonomous vehicle.