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

signed. The Incubator is assisted in establishment of several business incubators in
Serbia (Valjevo, Vranje, Medvedja, Bor, Prokuplje) and is now wide recognized as a
model, not only for support to entrepreneurs, but also as a national model for
business incubation.
Industry/Sector (technology area): Light industry (shoes, textiles, paper production
etc.)
International activities: The BIC Knjaževac is a member of SENSI and cooperates
in various fields with international institutions and organizations (CHF/USAID, OSCE,
ENTRANSE, CIDA, Hamilton Incubation of Technology (Canada), Business
Incubator Vidin (Bulgaria) etc).
Name of
initiative:
Business Incubator Zrenjanin (BIZ) - Vojvodina
Contact person: Bojan Ljutić (BIZ Manager)
Email: inkubator@biz-zr.co.yu
Website: http://www.biz-zr.co.yu/indexeng.html
The first business incubator in the Province of Vojvodina – unique in Serbia due to its
conception directed solely towards information technologies – has been officially
opened in December 2006. The Business incubator in Zrenjanin (BIZ) aims to assist
entrepreneurs with enterprise start-ups and business development in the field of new
software development in the city of Zrenjanin (Banat region) in Vojvodina. The target
group for the business incubator is the software development professionals in
Zrenjanin – a town with more than a hundred unemployed IT professionals, as well
as approximately 100 IT graduates every year (“Mihajlo Pupin” Faculty), mostly
without job opportunities.
The BIZ is owned by the municipality of Zrenjanin and Vojvodina Investment
Promotion Fund and supported under the project: ‘Building Business Incubators’ as
part of the Integrated Regional Development Plan of the Autonomous Province of
Vojvodina by German Organization for Technical Co-operation (GTZ), ENTRANSE,
OSCE, Serbian Agency for SMEs Development, IT Faculty in Zrenjanin, Regional
Chamber of Commerce, Regional Development Agency – Banat, etc.
The incubation period is three years and linkages between the industry and
academia are encouraged by the initiative.
The objectives of the BIZ are common also for the Business Incubator Subotica
(BIS):
• Stimulate SMEs development process;
• Improve competitiveness of regional start-up businesses;
• Encourage industry-science links; and
• Create practical and business oriented local support capacities.
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