Public Agency for Technology, Republic of Slovenia
TIA is a national government body shaping and executing technology policy in Slovenia. In 2007 the budget of the Agency increased to over 70 mio EUR (mainly from EU Structural funds) in order to support sectorial joint projects of companies and research organisations and some other.
The Agency is also a partner in a Community project (Valor; FP6 InnoNET) examining and supporting mechanisms for valorisation (commercialising of knowledge and technology). Within the project our Agency has created and is implementing a funding programme supporting creation of spin off companies.
The Agency is in close cooperation with national ministries creating national policy on entrepreneurship and technology. The Agency is therefore closely related with the policy development and is in place to make an overview of national efforts on topics related to Target project proposal.
TIA was founded by the Republic of Slovenia on the basis of the Foundation to implement specific tasks defined by the law which complies with the public interests and further to ensure enduring expert and independent implementation of the measures in order to support technological development and innovation financed by the state budget as well as by other sources of financial means.
TIA carries out the expert development and executive tasks which are supposed to advance the technological development and innovation in accordance with the adopted national research and development program and other national programmes supporting enterprises and competition.
The vision of the TIA is to develop the agency which could have a decisive impact on the goals of the national development and at the same time it could play an important role in the international network of the agencies.
The innovative creativity in Slovenia should be encouraged and the companies are to reinforce the global knowledge and technological development which could be the main reason for the productivity increase and for the growth of competition as well as the source of the improvement of individual and social life quality.
The aim of TIA is to support and encourage the development of the economy by offering financial support to the development programmes of the companies, especially those participating in the operations of the joint companies. These efforts of joint cooperation result in the transfer of the knowledge and the cooperation with the science institutions in Slovenia and abroad. By supporting specific projects, TIA would add to the growth of the technologically demanding products and services of the Slovenian economy. Both features are necessary to reinforce the social and technological development as the main source of the national competition within the global regions.
Dr. Franc Gider is general director of the Public Agency for Technology of the Republic of Slovenia (TIA), with relevant experiences in business consulting and innovation efforts in Slovenian companies. His expertise is in Operations management, Lean manufacturing, Continuous Improvement systems, SMED, TPM etc.
Mrs. Alenka Mubi Zalaznik is a project manager, responsible for managing EU projects at TIA (Novaregio, Define, IPPS, StarnetRegio). She was previously employed at Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EU department, responsible for EU projects) and Ljubljana University Incubator (project manager).
