2 years Mercury - Jupiter meetings for business people and scientists

During 2013-2015 CSI, in cooperation with the Knowledge, Innovation and Strategies Management Club, betahaus Sofia and Sofia Tech Park had been organising the so called Mercury - Jupiter Meetings to bridge the gap between scientists and business people in Bulgaria and help them understand each other’s culture. At those meetings groups of scientists and business people talked about their cultures and  discussed ways to bridge the gap between each other.

For the span of those two years the meetings gathered interest from the Bulgarian community and many attended to get involved in the discussions and look for the best ways to reduce the size of the gap between scientists and businessmen.

The Mercury - Jupiter meetings were also attended by guest speakers who would guide the meeting towards a specific topic. The topics of discussions had been related to the experience of the speakers. Below you could see some of the guest speakers during 2013-2015.

• Richard Smits - the owner-director of CSI. He was born in the Netherlands and received his education as a chemical engineer (Ph.D.) from the University of Twente. He worked for Haldor Topsøe A/S of Denmark as an R&D project manager for several years before moving to Bulgaria to start CSI. He knows the requirements of industrial research from the inside and has a wide experience in dealing with various cultures.

• Nikolay Tashev - has a B.Sc. in Мanagement from Manchester University and is the owner of Inomrezha, a company that teams up with engineers, scientists and other technically oriented people with good ideas to start a business to bring their innovations to market. He spoke about the companies he started and his experience in cooperating with technically skilled people to create business.

• Elitsa Panaiotova - the Executive Director of Sofia Tech Park - the company that is developing a large-scale project aiming to strengthen the research, innovation and technological growth in Bulgaria - the first Science and Technology Park. She spoke about the future goals of the park and how it would connect people from the business sector with those of the scientific community to make Bulgaria a more innovative country.

• Nikolai Denkov - a professor of physical chemistry in the Faculty of Chemistry & Pharmacy, Sofia University, where he studies foams, emulsions, surfactants and their applications. He was a lead researcher in R&D centers of the companies Rhodia (France) and Unilever (USA), and has led numerous international research projects. He is a co-founder of the civil platform MoveBG. He talked about the cooperation between scientists and business, based on his experience with the companies Unilever, BASF and Saint Gobain.

• Sjoerd Oppewal - has an economic and a human resource and organization development education, and has been personnel manager of the Dutch research organisation for water management for 13 years. He is now a consultant on change management and organization development, based in Bulgaria. He talked about his experiences as personnel manager in a period when the research institute saw its state-financed budget reduced from 70% to 30% in 3 years, and had to adapt its culture from one of applied science to one of market-oriented professional consultancy. The institute is now known as Deltares, an applied research and consultancy organisation with 800 employees and worldwide operations.
  

• Milena Koleva - an innovation management consultant and secretary of Knowledge, innovation and strategies management club (KISMC) with practical experience in industry and management consulting. She talked about "educating business people and scientists to cooperate on innovation" and briefly presented the initiative of KISMC for Innovation Management Academy - i.e. creating organizational, resource, and staff conditions for dissemination and practical application of innovation management in companies as an instrument for competitiveness. Nowadays everyone is talking about the gap between academia and business, but does it really exist? Can business be more innovative without the cooperation with academia and vice versa? And where is the fine line between the two, given their common goal to produce innovations for a better future for all of us?
  

• Tsvetoslava Kyoseva - an Innovation and Business Development consultant with more than 11 years practical experience in the telecom industry. Her professional career began in Mtel, where she held various positions gradually as a manager of local and international projects, and later on leading the development of long-term strategies for the implementation of various technologies and innovative products within the company. Currently she is a PhD candidate in the field of technological innovation at the Technical University of Sofia and she is specialising entrepreneurship and innovation in Vienna, Austria. She talked about “The innovation-invention gap between the two worlds of business and academia”.
  

• Prof. Venko Beshkov - director of the Institute of Chemical Engineering, BAS, and of ICHEM-BAN OOD, on the successful commercialisation of knowledge in chemical engineering.
  

• Emil Komatichev - a senior expert in the ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship’ Department, 'Economic Promotion Policies' Directorate of the Ministry of Economy. He has participated in the development of important strategic documents of the Bulgarian Government including the ‘Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialization’, assessments of many innovative projects under OP Competitiveness, in the setting up of entrepreneurial centres in technical universities, in the development of schemes to promote cooperation between business and science (e.g. the voucher scheme) and others.
  

• Teodora Georgieva and Ruslan Stefanov - work for the Applied Research and Communications Fund (ARC Fund), the premier Bulgarian innovation policy and research institute. They are co-authors of Innovation.bg, an annual assessment of the current performance of the national innovation system and the implementation of the national innovation policy. At the Mercury-Jupiter meeting, they presented information and conclusions from the latest edition of this assessment in order to discuss how people from the science and business sectors can contribute to improvements in Bulgaria's innovation performance.
  

• Simeon Stoyanov - graduated from Sofia University in chemistry, physics and mathematics, and then obtained his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Essen. He is now a senior scientist at Unilever R&D in the Netherlands, being deeply involved in Unilever's research co-operations with various universities (including Sofia University). He combines this position with part-time professorships at 3 universities in 3 different countries. He presented on what it is like to work as a scientist in a multinational company, how he combined this with his professorships, and how this could be applied to improve connections between business and science in Bulgaria.
  

• Zlatina Karova - the Head of Unit, Centre for technology transfer and project work of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". By education, she is a lawyer with specialisation in international law and justice. She has a master's degree in European Public Administration from Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", has a number of certificates and completed additional training courses for trainers at prestigious international organizations. Zlatina Karova talked about the experience of the Centre for Technology Transfer in connecting people from science and from business in Bulgaria.
  

• Eleonora Carnasa - the Head of “European Innovation and Information Center” at the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. She has an extensive experience in supporting the Bulgarian business and is specializing in innovation management capacity assessment and sources of finance. Eleonora speake about crowdfunding – online practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people. Crowdfunding has raised over $5 billion in 2013 and is suitable for business, social and artistic causes. Eleonora holds a MBA degree from Nantes University, France and is trained to organize crowdfunding campaigns.

• Mihaela Savova - the Ambassador of Hello Tomorrow (HT) in Bulgaria – an international organization that connects innovators from all generations and fields – from science and technology to business and investments. HT’s ambitious mission is to provide its global community the platform to build a better tomorrow through tech innovations. Mrs. Savova talked about the World Community, Global Startup Challenge and International Conference, organized by HT, and shared how the organization would connect people from science and people from business in Bulgaria.