S&T Country Report - Albania - WBC-INCO Net

Industry/Sector (technology area): Elektrotechnology, Biotechnology,
Pharmaceutics and High Technology overall
International activities: Not available
D) Business-start-up Centres/ Technology Incubators
Business incubators and technology centres contribute to a better entrepreneurial
climate in the surrounding area and give the impulse for everybody to start a
business, to keep the business alive and to create new jobs, which is very important
for the community.
The objectives of the business incubation and technology centres are to (United
Nations, 2001):
• support new technology based companies;
• create future-oriented jobs for qualified employees;
• support commercialization of the innovations;
• promote national technology, products and services;
• attract FDI and joint ventures;
• support the clustering processes;
• support regional development;
• strengthen national competitiveness; and
• enhance international networking.
The report on the implementation of the European Charter for Small Enterprises
stated that Croatia has the most advanced business incubator programmes. There is
a national network of business incubators, as well as a national programme to
support their operation and to establish new ones. In most cases, however, the focus
is not on innovation and high-quality services are not always available. The scope of
some incubators is limited to providing subsidised workspace in regions where
finding suitable industrial premises is still a problem. Tenant exit strategies differ from
case to case, but few business incubators show a dynamic rate of turnover; one of
the main problems remains the relative difficulty of finding alternative locations at
affordable prices on the open market (OECD and EC, 2007).
First incubators appeared in Croatia in mid 90', when the oldest incubator in Rijeka
'Porin' was opened (in 1996). All incubators are established as limited liability
companies and are mainly in public ownership. Initial funding for incubators in most
of the cases was coming from local or international project financing. Nowadays, the
major financial instrument for incubators is the TehCro programme (Technology
Infrastructure Development Programme), which was initiated by the Government and
enables the right technology infrastructure to support commercialization of research
outputs and development and growth of knowledge-based enterprises.
According to the Policy Performance Assessment, 15 fully operational Business
Incubators out of 20 registered could be identified (status – April 2004). However,
there are also several incubators operating under the remit of some of the Centres for
Entrepreneurship or Technology Centres (for instance in Pakrac, Samobor or Split).
Most of the Business Incubators are located in less developed regions such as
page 32/HRV