 Θα ήθελα να συνεχίσω με τον δεύτερο παράδειγμα της Σπίρος Ατ-Αβάνης Τσάκονας, Σπίρος είναι η Προφέσσαρα Μεριδούς της Σελβιολογίας από Χαρβερτ, και η Προφέσσαρα Μεριδούς της Γενέντιξης και Δευελογικής Βιολογίας Κόλας-Τεφράνης. Ποια είναι κάτι που δεν είναι καλύτερο, είναι ότι Σπίρος was the Chief Scientific Officer at Biogen, from 2012 until 2016. Είναι ο κόμφαρς της δεύτερος μυαλικούς κόμπανις, τρία από τους που μου έκανε, και είναι ο κόμφαρς και κόμφαρς της Φιλαντροπικής Οργανισμής Σαντή, συνεχώς προσπαθεί με τη δημιουργία της μυαλικής δημιουργίας της Γρήσης. Μετά από την εξαιρία της Δυναμίας, έγινε στο Γρήσης και είναι ο κόμφαρς της ΣΥΤΗΚ. Είμαστε αρκετά από κάποιες εξαιρήσεις που θα τα προσπαθεί στο κόμφαρ, στις τους κόμφαρς της Φιλαντροπικής Οργανισμής, και είναι το κόμφαρς της Σπίρος. Πώς να συγκοτελείς τον Σπίρο, την εξαιρία της Γρήσης, οι Ευρωπαϊκές, οι Ρεθέντες, πιο από την εξαιρία που έχετε, στο Γρήση της Δυναμίας, πώς μπορείτε να δείτε σημαντικό σημαντικό, και ξέρω ότι το κόμφαρς της Δυναμίας θα σημαίνει πολύ σημαντικά, αλλά θα είναι καλύτερο να αρκετήσει, τι είναι your view of basic science and entrepreneurship. Ευχαριστούμε πολύ. Δηλαδή, να πω να πω, ότι κάποιες εξαιρήσεις που το Ταπερνάραγκης είπα, εξαιρήσω τίποτα. Η δυνατότητα, είναι καλύτερη, και τα κομφαρές. Αλρίτε, λοιπόν, άφησα να μου κίνω τη χωρίς. Η δυνατότητα entre κομφαρές και βασικού ξανά, είναι πολύ αγές. Και αυτό είναι βραδίωση. Χωριά της ξανά, βασική χώρη, θα συμμε αυτό για η νταρμόληση. Αν δεν υπάρχει η στιγμή, που θα υπάρχει η δυνατότητα για να χρησιμοποιήσει στην δυνατότητα ένα δεύτερο εργασία ή ένα δεύτερο εργασία. Η σινέα δεν είναι σινέα για την Ελλάδα, δεν είναι μπροσφή για τον Λωριάν, όπως οι φίλοι θα πω. Η σινέα είναι η σινέα. Βεβαίτες σινέα, και υπάρχει μία σινέα. Είναι αυτό. Τώρα, νομίζω ότι, όπως ειδικά, το Νεκταρίος αρτήγιωθεί, έχουμε, δεν υπάρχει πίσω εδώ. Υπάρχει πίσω. Υπάρχουν πίσω της εξηλής, στην Ελλάδα. Δεν υπάρχει πίσω. Αλλά υπάρχουν αυτές οι πιρρανιών, πρόβληματος, που έχουν βάγει, να παίρνουν, καταστροφικά, γρήκου σινέα. Πυροκρασία, πραγματικότητα, πραγματικότητα, πράγματικότητα, πραγματικότητα, πραγματικότητα, πραγματικότητα, και οι δυνατές, όπως αντιμετωπίωσης, είναι κάτι διαφορετικό, από δυνατές που έχουν κάνει, έρευνα, που έχουν κάνει, στην δυνατή, στην δυνατή. Είναι αυτό. Και υπάρχουν, υπάρχουν διαφορετικότητα, από δυνατές, από δυνατές, γιατί οι δυνατές είναι under the ministry of, of the synaptics or whatever it's called, και δεν μπορώ να καταστρέψω, δεν μπορώ να καταστρέψω their tune. Και το άλλο είναι, και οι δυνατές είναι under the, the auspices of the, of the pedias. So, so I think this is just, just does not make any sense. We are very small, we have very little money, and the money that we, the little money that we have, is being completely fragmented, is being left and right, without any coordination, without any system, without any plan, without even we can, if we were to copy 100%, what's happening in Europe, we will do a good job, frankly. We will do a good job. Of course, the bureaucracy that exists in Greece, and that you people are suffering from, every day, has nothing to do with the tremendous, the horrendous bureaucracy of Brussels. Even that is smaller than, than our kind of difficulties. All right? So, I think that, that there is a, combining, or rather connecting, linking, entrepreneurship with, with science, one link, quality. And as, as a professor, George has said, knowledge produces knowledge. This is a unique property, really. All right? Except viruses produce viruses, but, but, but knowledge produces knowledge as well. And that can only be to, to our benefit. At the ESETEC, we are trying very hard to, sort of correct some of these, they say, these things. In terms of entrepreneurship, through the leadership really of, of Aristo's, and some of our other, of our other ESETEC colleagues, there has been an effort to improve patent, policies, patent applications. There has been an effort to simplify, codify whatever you want to say, about startups. But again, startups, there is no, there's no tree, that I will go and get a startup today, and another startup tomorrow. Startups mean ideas. Startups come from basic science, whether we like it, because it's blue sky science, which annoys me enormously, when they say that. But, but this is, this is where innovation comes from. There's no doubt about it. I mean, science is the mother of innovation. There's no, there's no other mother. So, so we're trying very hard, we're trying very hard, whether we will be successful or not, it remains to be seen. Thank you. Our next panelist is, Professor Giannis Ioannidis. Giannis is a professor at the Department of Informatics and Telecom National Capodistrian University. He's also the current, recently elected president of the Association of Computing Machinery, started July 1st, 2022, Kadori Zikotiani, and we're very proud of that. And he's also the co-founder and inaugural head of the Open Air Initiative. Has been president of AFINA for 10 years. And he has also been an entrepreneur, he was a co-founder of a company called OPEX. I could ask you a lot about this area, but I will ask you something, as I mentioned to you, that I know you care about, and I think it's quite relevant. Namely, what should be done in the educational system, so that the youngsters get exposed to entrepreneurship early, early on, and how early that should be. What should be done, so that fail early, fail fast, fail often, as a natural and even educational mentality, replacing the risk-averness, but characterizes a large part of Greek society, Yannis. Thank you very much Dimitri. This question is a concern and agony of mine. I will start my presentation, my thoughts exactly in the way that Spiros did, and saying that every word that Nectarios said, I absolutely agree with. But I want to say that Nectarios didn't say a few more words, and I want to add them. Correct me if I'm wrong, Nectaria, but you said that the basic obstacles to innovation in Europe and in Greece are innovation performance, innovation funding and innovation ecosystem. Am I, do I remember correct? Okay. Well, I want to add a fourth one, and it's innovation mentality for Greece. And that's the gist of the question. And also in other slides, Nectarios very correctly say, we're extremely successful in educating young scientists, which is absolutely correct. But we are failing miserably to educate young entrepreneurs. And that's a big gap, and John Barr's earlier this morning mentioned about stuff that they do at Maryland and elsewhere in the U.S., and we are missing that. We are a very risk averse society in general in Greece, and therefore also our scientists and our youngsters are very risk averse. Both in my experience at the Athena Research Center, which we are like many other of our research centers in Greece, trying to do technology transfer, trying to move, take from, go from research to innovation and have startups. We've had a very great exit, not a unicorn, but in Greece we've had one unicorn, but I will take double corns and even triple corns for the time being until we get to too many unicorns. So both from my experience in the Athena Research Center and some colleagues at the University of Athens where I am, when you see ideas, students talking about this or that, and then when you say, okay, let's take it one step further. I mean, why don't you go and form a startup with some friends and so on and so forth with some professors helping or not helping, it doesn't matter. The answer much more often than not is, well, yes, but what if I fail? Well, it's okay to fail. You are 20 years old, now is the time to fail and fail again and again and if you fail 10 times, then okay, go and go to a ministry or to a company with a safe environment. But if you don't fail now, you don't expect to come to my age and then fail, okay? But this is not something that you can get to youngsters' minds easily and we need to train them for this. By adding courses across departments, across disciplines have project-based education and not only at the university level. We should have it there, but I think our educational system even before, I won't go to grammar school, but definitely to high school. We should have project-based courses where someone should even fund, I don't know if we could do this, but someone should give money, a little money, 100 euros per team, okay? Go check after some training and invest and spend or come up with something and see if you can sell it around and see if this 100 dollars, you can make it 110 or you lose it all and it is fine to lose 100 euros. This is something that we are truly missing to feed the innovation ecosystem and to generate true innovation funding and have innovation performance, which are the three elements that Nectarios very well identified. But to have at the incoming door many more students, many more people willing to fail. And if we do this, I think it will not solve the entire problem, the others have to be solved, but I think it will be a virtuous circle that we can put in motion and become a startup nation of a different flavor. We will never become Israel because Israel has certain characteristics. But whatever startup nation we can become, nobody else will because we have special characteristics and we can take advantage of them as long as we have the mentality issue solved. Thank you. Thank you, Janne. Our next panelist is Dr. Vasilis Papakostandinou. Vasilis is the co-founder and chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum in Greece. The Greek chapter of an MIT inspired global network. He's also the co-founder of a startup company, a technology company. So he brings to the panel extensive experience in the startup environment in Greece. So in that respect, Vasilis, what I would like to ask you is what lessons regarding entrepreneurship do you think you could bring from the MIT Enterprise Forum to the Greek environment? What mechanisms have to be put in place to promote entrepreneurship? And what are the bridges that are required in the academic community? First of all, I would like to thank you, Dimitri, for inviting me. Obviously, I'm not an academic. So maybe sometimes they confuse me for the singer, which I'm not also. So I have a personality issue here. But yeah, I think, you know, we are here at the Eugenius Foundation, which happened to be an advisor to the board that comes from shipping. And I think technology development has a lot of things to learn from shipping to begin with, because, you know, we are the largest shipping community in the world and shipping and technology has some similarities. So I'll just point them before I go to your question and the similarities that we love to be here, to live here, but we are better competing with the rest of the world instead of among us. So technology can provide that thing. So in 2012, we started the MIT Enterprise Forum. As Dimitri said, it's an MIT inspired network that started back in the 70s to help MIT alumni become entrepreneurs because they were facing similar problems. A lot of them, they were staying in the academia, going to large organizations and there were no skills or ways to train them. So we tried in 2012, 10 years ago, actually 2012, amidst the problems that we had that year to bring MIT Enterprise from here because we thought that the opportunity that Nicaragua has described is larger and higher than the obstacles that we see here. And we put an ambitious goal to make Greece a tech hub by 2021. And I'm sure you know that it happened or partially it happened, but it was a joke. We did not set out to do that. We just wanted to see beyond the 2020 horizon. And you know, as MIT geeks, we thought that this wouldn't be a good joke. But the reality is that over these years, we have accelerated more than 200 startups. I would say about 25, 20-25% of them coming out of or be related to universities and research centers, companies like ArteSafe, PD Neurotechnology, Rescue Biotech, George's here over there, Nanoplasma, Advantis or PC Nanomaterials. And to my amazement, to our amazement, we saw that researchers can become great entrepreneurs as long as they are giving a set of tools and changing a little bit the mentality. So, the lessons are hopeful. I think the mechanism, the structure requires investing more in educating at different levels, both at the university, maybe at the high school, but certainly at the university level and requires a lot of mentoring. The problem is not that we don't have good science necessarily, is that sometimes it is applied in not so relevant, not to say irrelevant application. So, mentorship and discussions like that help researchers focus their skills to problems that are relevant. And to this respect, besides the extradition program that we have completed the eighth cycle, we are also trying to do what we call incentive price competitions. They are more than much like what Professor Yorstos mentioned in the morning about Grand Challenges. We did the first one with AIDAP with the help of Professor Vavarigu last year and we got 170 applications of people that they had no prior entrepreneurial experience, but they were intrigued by the targets and the goals and the difficulty of the problem. So, we need to get more of that. Initially, not very Grand Challenges because we have to build the skills. You have to gradually increase the difficulty together with the capacity of the people to adapt to that, but eventually we have to do that. The last thing we learned is that organizations have to work together. When we started MIT Enterprise Forum officially in September 2013 in this very room, we set out that we wanted to build bridges with the Greek tech diasporas we called it at that time. Now it's called Hellenic Innovation Network, a company that we co-founded with Marina Hatsopoulos and a few other people like Michael Blitzas in Boston. And the reason is to get diaspora closer to what is happening here. Sometimes diaspora, especially the beginning, were rightfully angry with what is happening here and they were coming only for vacation. It is great to see that people in this room come back to help. They see value in what is happening here. Maybe it is substandard to what we see in other place of the world, but there's huge opportunity the risk deep technology is still very cheap here. I think it would still outside computer science it's a fourth to a fifth which means that for every startup that you invest with a similar team in Boston you can find four here. So I would say we need to work closer at the university level. This year we launched again in this room a Greek book, the Greek version of a book called, Discipline Entrepreneurship by Professor Bill Ole and we are happy that already four or five universities are using this book to introduce entrepreneurship to their students and I'm grateful that they invited me to join a course that they are doing. So it is hopeful the things that we copy from elsewhere work and we need just to put more resources and be patient because as the meeting you asked it took us 10 years so I'm sure starting highest now you have plenty of time to build stuff over the next 10 years. Thank you. Thank you. Our last panelist is Professor Nikos Parallios. Nikos is a distinguished professor of mathematics in a call Central Superlec one of the grand calls of engineering in France. But he's also the founder and chief executive officer of TheraPanachia. It's a 65-people company in three continents including a development office in Athens harnessing AI to develop cutting-edge software for more efficient and precise cancer care currently in four continents. So he brings both academic and entrepreneurial background to the panel. So Nikos I would like to ask you the following what lessons from your experience in France you learned that you feel are relevant for Greece and something else that I know you believe that clearly successful companies need not come from universities because that's what we have been talking primarily so far. So what other models are there and what can we learn for Greece regarding that aspect? Yes, so I would like also to thank the organizers for the invitation. Usually I'm an outlier on different panels so I think it's going to be the case also today. I mean I will just simply explain the France paradox which is very similar to the Greek paradox until 2015 actually France has zero unicorns zero and France has institutions like CNRS like in CERM like INRIA which of course they are not founded at the level of MIT or Stanford or Harvard but they are not as bad as in Greece. I mean they they get a substantial amount of money. We have great researchers that they end up winning fields metals price during awards so the education system and the research self was actually very very powerful and we're producing high level research and despite this fact I mean there was as I said before zero unicorns and when President Macron was elected I mean his ambition was that by 2025 France should have at least 25 unicorns that was ambition on 2017. Today we're on 2022 and France has already 37 unicorns. The educational system hasn't changed there are no more money that are invested in the research as was before. There are many very simple things that happen. The first there was a legal framework that allows university professors and public servants to actually to take a partial leave from their position maintain their position up to six years and then return to their position to find a startup. So that means you create a framework where you encourage people to start something new and to take a risk which was not there before. Even more this framework for the people that actually were leaving the university if it was a university startup could guarantee 12 months of full salary paid from the French state. If you do that then you give the actually to people you know the desire to go to the next step. The next thing that happened actually is that they put in place a mechanism which is called acceleration companies that are founded by the French public investing company and that all of these companies is to provide seat found for university startups. It can be up to a half a million and the reimbursement is there if there is a success. If the company fails then I mean these are public money then there will be no reimbursement and the reimbursement will be based on revenues of the company the futures to come. So universities now allows professors to actually start the project take the risk because they can actually do that for up to six years and then return while their salaries paid for the first year. This was on the university side. Then in France we have very interesting tax benefits for innovative companies since we have people from the Ministry of Industrial Development I think it's the right time to say it. If you are actually considered as an innovative company and there is a formal process of reviewing what is an innovative company or not first of all you are not paying social contributions that means that if you pay someone you don't have to contribute on the retirement as employer so this decrease significantly the cost to the startups to hire new people with good packages that's the first one. The second which is also very interesting is that you are getting tax benefits independently whether you are making or losing money on all the research money that you are investing so if your budget is one million euros and the one million euros is devoted to research the French state at the end of the year even if you are losing money it will reimburse you 300,000 euros. So there is also a fiscal difference. So I think investing on fundamental research is something that will make a big difference especially in Greece where we have really a severe issues of founding meritocracy and all the matters we've heard before but as I explained before France has a great research and educational system and there was not converted or there was not a success story on creating startups. So we need to change and there seemed something that was said from Yanis which is very important. It's a question also of mentality. You have to make people believe that they can deliver a project. I mean we live in a place where when you start something by default people will try to explain you that things will not work. This has to change. If you cannot convince people that things can change they cannot put you know they cannot have the ambition that they should have especially in starting such a project. So three words legal framework reinforcing and giving the ability to hire to academics to go to the next level of you know industrial creation of value that's very important. Clear you know policies coming from the industrial development on how the state can encourage this because at the end this money comes to the state if a company is successful you will pay taxes and the third thing is actually starting from very early stage convincing you know try to educate people young people but not only young people I think I did the start when I was 45 so people are looking to me like crazy. So I mean you can actually make the difference if you believe on something and change the mentality that you know things can happen. So this is the three things that I can add from my French experience. Thank you Nicole. I would like to also ask all of our panelists to be briefing the following question. So we also start with the audience. Suppose you have one action to propose and suppose you have enough resources in other words suppose HIAS is very successful it raises a billion dollars billion dollars that Apostolis talked us in the morning or different but you have sizable resources in your hands. What would be the one action don't tell me five one that each of you will propose and I would like all of you to participate but the first can volunteer no volunteers yet. Okay. Why not if I fail I fail right as we learn from youngs fail often early. All right. I think that linking again you know I will harp my theme on quality of basic science. I think that's that's a key for me notwithstanding what we just heard I completely agree with that. All right. But but I think that if you can put your billion dollars to professorships that will take the money that the Nectarius gets from his university and triple it or quadruple it then you can bring a lot of people back here. So you you will hire high quality people. Yes. In basic science. Primarily not but not necessarily just understanding only in basic science but good. But I could bring I can bring diaspora people of very high quality and accomplishment bring them back in back here in a way that they can live thank you. They can support their children. Mixtaria no pressure. So coming back to the regularity of dispersing funding and what we discussed about consistency. What I would do is really set up a mechanism that would distribute funding across the spectrum not just for research but also for developing innovation that would be based on meritocracy and would be regular would be very predictable and would be sizable enough to provide substantial funding that is required to do real work. Like NSF for example it's regular something sizable and exactly that's what we have in mind. Yes. Yes. Something like the NSF that's based on meritocracy. But that's to press a point. If your objective is to develop entrepreneurship not to create knowledge to create dollars from knowledge as well as knowledge would still be your answer. Yeah. I think that still you need a mechanism to be able to to disperse funding in a meritorious way. So which is not done today in your mind. I don't think so. No. Okay. Yeah. That's something to note. Okay. Thank you. Shall I? Of course. I will take I will take the phrase of Nectarios of spread I mean one billion dollars is is a lot of it's quite a bit of money. And I won't put it on only one stage of the life cycle of creating of the triangle of knowledge so to speak. I will spread it. I won't give you presenters now. It requires more thoughts but yes on basic science but also yes on funding startups because we have the ecosystem of VCs which have quite a bit of money but it's not enough. We need more money so even on at that level I would put money and to be true to to what I said before also going to the very early stages and educating youngsters from high school on I would put money in a meritocratic but also inventive ways on how to do this training of entrepreneurship. So starting from the 15 year old all the way to the 100 year old entrepreneur that needs VC funding and support for her or his startup we need money across the board. I would split the amount in two ways. First to create campaigns like the ones that we have for tourism to get people to understand that they can leave their dream while working in Greece instead of just coming here for a couple of weeks and then going back and the rest will be to attract the top entrepreneurial companies in the world the Googles and whatever else you have in mind that they can train hands on the people that are coming out of universities and they will break this cycle the mentality that we're discussing and also expose problems that they these people then can go out and create because the majority of the startups we see are usually people that they work in large organizations they see the the issues that they are not sold and they go out with that knowledge and build it for Okay, again I will be a little outlier. So I mean it's a successful project that requires people technology network and money. So I think in Greece we have people we may have technology we don't have network and we don't have money So if I had one billion I think first a big bulk of money I will invest them on joint grants between research institutions and industry especially startups for creating value that can be transferred to the real world that's the first thing another bulk of money I will use them as seed founding today the hardest part for the startup is going from the idea to the proof of concept if you are able to solve a proof of concept whether you are a Greek company an Ukrainian company or an Israeli company you're going to be able to get money maybe not in the same conditions but you'll be able to get money today what we need in Greece is to have seed money So again I will make an analogy so I will put the money on a public investment fund that is actually not the managing part is not banned by the public state but for the private people that have experience where the aim is actually to create seed founding that can push startups coming from universities but also startups coming from people that at some point went to the university they have an idea to create value that's how I will use the money Thank you I would also like to ask another question in the audience we have the rectors of the two largest universities of Greece both the National Technical University and ECPA there might be others I simply do not know So of course I'm sorry that I did not know my mistake that's good even better So what would be your advice? What would you advise the rectors to be an action that promotes that? What would be your view? Again the volunteers let's have a dialogue as opposed to all of us talking Any volunteers? You are flirting with a... I already said one thing about adding entrepreneurial courses to the curriculum that go across departments across schools across all these things and the other one is already in the making technology transfer offices which also require education require experts in this and external advisors from industry or from people that have lived entrepreneurship in their blood not just theoretical and create emotion in the academic world not just the professors not just us but the students with or without us insist on this to enter again use the word to change their mentality take a step that may be risky and learn how to do this and of course then with the appropriate policies to get the spin-offs There are many other ways of technology start-offs but I think the spin-off is the DNA of innovation and that's where we should focus on Are you giving money to the deans? I think that the most important thing in my view is the number of students that these people are always obliged to suffer The quality of education is going down is inversely proportional with the number of students these people are being pushed every year to accept So that's what I would do That would increase the diversity? I think eventually it would Get going from my thesis of I don't know So not to really brag about it but I think we have great universities I'm also a student of those universities I graduated from the University of Saloniki I believe though that universities are tremendously underfunded in Greece So I think this is the real source of all problems that universities face these days They are underfunded so they cannot set up mechanisms that would translate the results that are generated within university laboratories to entrepreneurship products, services etc. So this is something that needs to be taken into consideration and also of course I think there needs to be a more direct collaboration with research centers because the research ecosystem of Greece is now again fragmented Spiros already mentioned that and this is something that we need to work on we need to have a better integration of universities and research centers but the underfunding and chronic underfunding is creating a lot of problems laboratory facilities equipment etc. These things create pathogens they repel people So this is something we need to do Perhaps I didn't make myself very clear I recognized underfunding However, we are where we are The question is what can Greek universities do the leadership of these universities given the level of funding to improve further I got some answers Yeah, so actually I will again second Yanis what he said is actually the right thing to do start by maybe not even earlier than the university level for courses about entrepreneurship but there is something else if we look on today on success stories they are interdisciplinary data is bringing value on medicine data is bringing value on networks biology is bringing value on many different domains I had another billion euros I will have given to the university directors but if I don't have the billion I will ask them to reinforce interdisciplinary programs between science, medicine, biology chemistry this is where you can create value because you can do what is happening in pharma you are doing repositioning you take a technology in a domain that is already there and you know and then you applied another domain and that's what creates value and also beneficial for the university because it can bring money are interdisciplinary programs at graduate level Vasily, any last words? Well when I left here I was trained as an engineer at the National Technical University of Athens and at some point a friend of mine told me about the VC and I told him I am an engineer I have to build things, I don't know anything about companies I had to go to MIT and get in love with the whole concept and the reason I did because I got involved in so many things like classes the competitions meeting people that they were very successful so I think many alumni from Greek universities have stellar performance not only in academia but also in entrepreneurship and we are happy to have the scientists but we don't celebrate the successful entrepreneurs so having them as part of courses many courses are taught by professors that they have an academic approach to entrepreneurship having hands on people that they invite these people to talk to the students I think it will be very powerful for the students and it will accelerate Thank you Vasily, I would like to open to the audience Christou I would like to ask the audience to ask a question briefly, not the positioning a question So I guess I need to form right now to the question I live in the bubble of Silicon Valley and I can compare ecosystems and we are missing two major things one is privately funded visas not people investing public money but investing their own money and private money and we can talk about I would like to hear your comments but what did they choose to deal with the Chinese Communist Party and few of them came to Europe that's an interesting thing to comment upon the second thing is exactly what Vasily said we need big companies for multiple reasons first of all they provide employment guarantee it's much easier to jump to a startup when you know that you can always go back to Google and get your cosy salary back right? the second thing is what Vasily said which is you learn the business practice you learn the customers and the technical needs and you jump out and you compete with your own company so I would like to hear what do we do to attract first rate privately funded visas and what do we do to attract big companies I know it's not a billion dollars it's something else very quickly we are attracting very big companies already and we are attracting them because of the great talent that we have in our students that we educate in the flawed and traumatized educational system that still produces great students I mean we heard Pfizer and Microsoft and Amazon and others are on the way and they are coming so getting more better students we'll get more bigger companies the first question I don't have an answer to Victoria yeah so this is indeed a problem but I think that we need to be able to provide support to those ideas innovative ideas that are too risky for the private sector to become involved so the private sector will become involved once you have a matured TRL but at very early TRLs and this is what we need to convince not just as Greece but also as Europe we need to be able to convince that we can produce disruptive innovation this is something that we are lacking both in Greece and in Europe now indeed as Janis said big companies are coming Pfizer is one example actually BioNTech is a startup of Gur Sahin, a Turkish researcher that got funding from the ERC so he was supported by a European instrument to generate their you know his together with his wife his startup that was then acquired by Pfizer so this was an example of innovation that happened in Europe but is now being exploited by a company based on the United States in New York so this is what we need we need to also have instruments that can provide support for that critical interval where the public the private sector cannot become involved yet it's too risky for them and then we can convince by doing this successfully we can convince the private sector to become involved and the Pfizer example is one such example Spirou The industry has not given money to research here that has not happened I was envious when he said that you have never written an NIH or an NSF grant and that's wonderful that's great but there's no chance in doing that here and for the companies smaller companies, Pfizer what's in for them they'll say what is in for them so if you had some funding so for example charitable funding I mean there are Greeks that can write a hundred million dollar check without losing any of their yachts or whatever but they don't do it they have not done that these are funds that could be given exactly the way actually Nektarius said that you give some for for new things, risky things and if you lose you lose no problem they've done it for universities in the United States you know the Nyarchos I know Marthenos but they have not and why haven't they done here because they are not they don't have confidence in the system but also but also in the quality of people we have not convinced them that there is enough quality of people here that they should I mean that their risk is not that enormous we have never really drawn on their patriotic I would like to give you opportunity to other people I just want to add something about that point Yes, 20 seconds LACIS of all places is investing in Switzerland supporting research in Switzerland actually they have a huge equivalent funding institution in Switzerland is backed by LACIS money Okay Just other questions Aristo I'm taking the risk of failure here but I'm asking you instead of asking question can I make two points or at least on what was said up to now not question Okay That's tough Okay Okay First The panel rightfully said that resources are missing in the very stages but because I have tried my team has tried very hard to work with spin-offs out of Greek universities and we also have the experience of investing in two spin-offs of Oxford University with Greek founders I have seen that there are certain mechanisms that are very on the micro level not on the institutional level that are difficult to establish and one thing is that a senior scientist or a professor who thinks they have an important invention being made does not usually understand that they and the people in their laboratory can bring it to a mature enough TRL level they think they can do it but they cannot and this is a mentality issue that is slightly different from what we said the few cases of Greek startups that were started by professors that are succeeding happened when one of their best students who also happened to have an entrepreneurial streak in them said ok I'm going to leave the laboratory and be the CEO and you professor support me so that person took the risk that Yanis was talking about so this is a mechanism that we need to somehow instill ok in Oxford what I've seen in the startups is that almost from day one they recruit a CEO who is from the industry and they also can get somebody from the lab to go out of the lab and work with the CEO on the science but to do that to be able to bring you know well paid CEOs or you have to be Oxford it's difficult to do that in Greece but at least you need to have a young person who wants to take the risk and now I'll take the prerogative from the president and talk about the diaspora which we haven't talked about much in this panel what we have been trying to do in my venture capital fund which is a science based fund I mean we invest only in deep technology as I said earlier we have been trying to bring spinouts out of universities and have not been very successful where we have been successful is where we found Greek founders in the states or in the UK who understand both the science and the market and said we will fund you if you set up an important part of your team in Greece and this has been working very very well so the diaspora can play a very important role in establishing science based you know startups in Greece we have here in the room Vangelis Vergettis who is the co-founder of Intelgencia Vangelis was at McKinsey in New York with his co-founder Dimitris Kalsas we have 10 people in the states 60 or 70 people in Athens the states they do business development and sales in Athens they do all the product development and it's a deep tech company AI for the pharma business that is one type of model that I feel can be very successful thanks Yes, Stefano Caxiras Uppsale University I have a small question about intellectual property Stefano showed this nice graph where Sweden was high up in the top and Greece was not no below lower in Sweden all the IP belongs to the professors and the students doesn't belong to the university doesn't belong to research institution doesn't belong to anyone else except the inventors do you think there's a correlation between the positions in this IP policy or do you think there's any IP policy just a factual element where I am the intellectual property on a patent only one third belongs to the university one third to the department one third to the provost let's say so it's not 100 just a fact do you think we could do better if we change that and how or it's good that we have but indeed ok recently we had a new law governing how spin-offs are created and this is a very important step in the right direction I think it's a big step but we need the other half and that's exactly how we deal how we manage intellectual property in Greece the legislature that we have now the framework that we have is very anachronistic it originates in the 80s even 70s some regulations are predate the second world war so we need a more flexible framework I think there is there are plans for having such a new law coming to the parliament but I think Michaelis can tell us Mr. Menes it was pressed before ok I want to bring it up again to highest and actionable items and I would like to ask do you think that there is room here for some kind of workshop or brainstorming session where define a unique opportunity to Greece for example the agro-cultural waste as a way forward to provide raw materials to do something that can also offer entrepreneurship you know examples like this so this is probably a question for hires but also for the panel but just to mention something that I think is useful for the future as well is that clearly there are many ideas that have been mentioned today we noted many of them we cannot do all of them I think part of our effort as the hires board is to decide where to focus on and this is something we will brainstorm and discuss so definitely we noted the idea but now I would like to still give the floor as I said before I think what we are liking in Greece are money and network and hires actually it's the best place to have network especially if you want to go beyond Greece so finding a way especially for tech companies coming from universities where people have already collaborated involving people who have academic or industrial appointments in Europe or in the US from involving hires will be a huge accelerator for all these projects so if you want to do something concrete we need to put in place a mechanism some people act as advisors and to have to think of a way of involving these people but today what we are liking in Greece is actually network and so when you have a great project it's not the same thing if you have a university professor from Harvard to make Petros happy we are saying oh I know this project and these people are good and it's not the same thing if you knock a door and say ah I'm a startup in Greece working on that so hires can offer network but actually finding mutual interesting relationship between people because network means time means credibility but I think this is something concrete that's how the huge impact the events have to be on both sides bringing people from abroad sometimes non-Greeks here to share ideas that they've been discussing or developing and also doing staff Hellenic Innovation Network does a lot of stuff in Boston in early May we had 200 people in the room that we have never seen before coming to listen to two top people from the life sciences industry and five startups from Greece that presented there so these opportunities as Nico said strengthening the network on both sides and give the not only the opportunity but the confidence to the people here in Greece that they are doing stuff that are relevant you know the worst thing is that building something that you are not as I used to say that you are not sure it's gonna go forward and you don't really know that there are people on the other side of the Atlantic that they are way before you and they are just marching forward because nobody is trying to stop them Yeah, I wanted to follow up on what Vasily was wondering if you could concrete ways let's say you've seen today a little bit what Hiace is, I personally know a little bit about Hellenic Innovation Network maybe we can have you on record also on how you see the two organizations Colab Well, I would have to defer to the president Marina Herzopoulos to do it Well, I think there are many opportunities to work together and if nothing else it just set the stage that two organizations with similar names are doing things that they are not competing but collaborating so I think Hellenic Innovation Network focuses more on building awareness abroad about the innovation that happens in Greece and tries to bring the diaspora code and Hiace can use your network to convince people to listen more come here so I think there are plenty of things Marina would be happy I think what we try to do is we try to have a house in Greece and having this house in Greece I think this could be a great place for innovators and venture capital to go and access all these members of the diaspora and their partners in Greece Hellenic Innovation Network is actually a 501C3 in the state so we don't have a house in Greece but we would be happy to to welcome we are also a 501C in the states but we can have we have checked that we can have an organization in Greece anyway we follow up the night is coming dinner is close any final burning question one somebody who really feels strongly that we have a final word no surprisingly Mr. Baras my experience for almost 13 countries in Europe and about 25 states in the US I agree with everything you said there's one thing missing which attacks particularly the hesitation, the fear and so on and this is the concept of guided entrepreneurship of George Turing who was a dean at Berkeley so the idea is you create a holding company you start the companies you find them customers it's not just an incubator, it's more than that and then you let them fly and that has been very successful your company is in France I know them because I am chair of the scientific board for the Cummins lab in Rens and they take their products from invention I try to discriminate between invention and innovation through this company they got products so question can HAYAS try to develop this concept there are papers on these, there are methodologies it's called guided entrepreneurship the company that Turing built was Technicron it started about 50 startups several professors from Berkeley and others they were involved and they were hesitant to do it themselves and this was the right instrument to get it going and one more thing what Aristo said and we practiced it in Maryland you need people to help you with marketing that's why the virtual capital is when you go with an idea they stick to you as CEO and a marketing person this was a comment, not a question so I would like to close the section I'll tell you a few things I noted that made an impression on me this is not of course very scientific but these are from my notes I heard throughout the day some desire for increasing this interdisciplinary education and its effects number two I heard entrepreneurial courses these are stronger connection between at least the Hellenic Innovation Network and HAYAS I thought the guided entrepreneurship that Dr. Baras mentioned is worth further discussion I'm certain there were many others but I would like to thank you all