There is no doubt that the topic that draws significant attention and is currently important in the for the Croatian economy and society, as a whole, is the one on the export of knowledge. Primarily it is about the knowledge achieved in high technology industry through research and similar activities related to innovations.

The members of the Lider’s Club of Exporters had a gathering in Ericsson Nikola Tesla and tried to answer the questions related to models of supporting the research and development and innovative activities.  The implementation of the given activities would enable Croatia to catch up with the developed Europe in the given segment. The aim is to encourage domestic potentials in research and development and innovative activities. This would make Croatian economy more competitive, creating new jobs and increasing export of high value added products, solutions and services.
So far, the export has not been the topic of any government session during its first half a year mandate, the Lider’s Club of Exporters officially upgraded the export environment primarily due to the Finance Minister, Slavko Linic, who has often underlined the importance of export. In addition, that was due to the President Josipović, who has mentioned this important topic several times, and the government minister Neven Mimica, who has been engaged on CEFTA activities.
Regardless of that, Miodrag Šajatović, the editor-in-chief of the Lider magazine, who opened the 4th Lider’s Club of Exporters under the title “What benefits for research and development segment would be useful to exporters”, pointed out that sooner of later, the export, as a sector of economy, will be the priority of the government.
Manuela Tašler, the Lider deputy editor, presented statistics on import and export underlining that Croatia was saved from even grater drop of standard, not thanks to the monetary gold export but the export of family gold belonging to citizens.

Saša Zelenika, the assistant minister for Science and Technology, noticed that the starting positions were very poor and that it will require quite some time until the things will turn to another direction. There were many structural problems in Croatia, which did not make things easier.
- Currently, we are at 76th position out of 140 countries as the competitive strength is concerned, and as of innovativeness, we held 30th position out of 34 countries. We have seven patents per million citizens, and an average in 27 EU countries is 116, said prof. Zelenika, and concluded that a change will surely require a great patience.

Gordana Kovačević, the president of Ericsson Nikola Tesla, the host company of the Lider’s Club of Exporters, underlined that it is worrisome that the high technology product share in the Croatian industry export was only four per cent.

“Croatia has no strategic orientation to industries that have potentials for development. Among them, there is ICT industry, the one that is developed in all highly competitive countries “, said Gordana Kovačević. Her conclusion was that declarative consciousness of the importance of the strategic orientation was present in Croatia, but there were no actual measures to raise the level of competitiveness, such as, labor cost relieves to increase the investments into research and development segment that in Croatia were only 0.7 percent of BDP.
 
Further, in her discussion, Gordana Kovačević gave comments to the model of benefits for the development and research activities that Ericsson Nikola Tesla had proposed for consideration to the respective Ministry. The proposed model would change the climate of benefits for the given activities and provide new investment momentum and positioning of the given activities as the competitive export of highly value added products. Miodrag Šajatović, put up a question on the Ministry approach to the given model, and got answer by prof. Zelenika, who explained the positive approach to the proposal. According to him, the respective Ministry has intensified activities on new elements of the model, as well as they initiated an interaction among the respective ministries that would result in a decision on an improved model.

Being the host of the gathering Gordana Kovačević presented, in brief, the main activities, markets and customers, export activities, potentials in research and development and innovations, cooperation with universities and scientific institutions, as well as the current ICT projects realized in Ericsson Nikola Tesla.
 
After the official part, numerous exporters and journalists were satisfied with a tour through working areas in Ericsson Nikola Tesla, and were provided with additional information on new export, research and development activities of this biggest Croatian exporter of knowledge.
 

Communications Ericsson Nikola Tesla