It is our vision to achieve world-class excelence in the construction of technology-based ventures.

To this end we started the construction of the MIETE knowledge base (MIETE.KB) in order to provide our current and old students with a clear competitive advantage in the construction of technology-based businesses.

As we all know, each business is a new business and a competitive advantage can be gained by sharing past errors, bad and successful experiences and approaches, as well as solutions to the most common issues. Having this in mind, we started a collaborative effort to gather knowledge regarding know-how and best practices, validated by the daily experience acquired in the construction of product and business value propositions.

MIETE.KB currently covers:
– Methodological issues and best practices
– Information sources (secondary information sources)
– MIETE in videostream (MIETE TEC Sequence seminars are recorded during the classes and published in Quicktime Hinted Streaming or MPEG4)
– MIETE student’s contacts

MIETE Knowledge Base is built on the Mediawiki platform. Access to the MIETE.KB is granted to every MIETE student and old-student. After authentication, the MIETE community is granted access to the collaborative edition of all its contents.

We started in October 2005 and the MIETE.KB is growing slowly as students realize the clear advantages of its usage.

What our students say…
Is it usefull? “Yes, it can be very usefull”; “It is a superb working tool allowing experiences of successes and failures to be shared”
Have you used it before? “Yes, I was looking for Patent information”
Did you manage to make any contributions so far? “Not yet, still more handy to use email. Maybe the interface can be improved”; “No, lack of time”; “Yes, one contribution made and a few more under preparation”

Lessons learned and future actions
MIETE.KB benefits are recognised by a broad majority of students. However, its usage is still not straight-forward for everybody, namely the editing. Next year new students will be given training on how to use this infrastructure so that the MIETE.KB can also be used as FAQ forum from the 1st day. This should ensure that the right momentum is gained on the knowledge gathering. We will further keep our effort to ensure that all contributions are made in English.

João José Pinto Ferreira, Director of MIETE