Simonyi Entrepreneurship Day at the FBE! (VIDEO)

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The Simonyi Center in Pécs facilitates the transformation of the Hungarian economy, particularly in Pécs and the surrounding region from a post-socialist to a western capitalist approach. It offers business development and assistance services to entrepreneurs and organizations in the fields of business, cultural arts, sciences and innovation.

The ceremonial welcome session was opened by Dr. Gyula Zeller, Vice Rector of the University of Pécs. He expressed his happiness about the guest attendants from the United States; namely Mr. Robert Riley, Deputy Chief for Economic and Political Affairs from the Embassy of the US and Mr. Hugh Sherman, Dean of Ohio University, College of Business. He said that in the past 25 years, cooperation was mainly about exchanging students and researchers between the Ohio University and the University of Pécs; the new goal is to enlarge the general international entrepreneurial spirit in Hungary. As he said, the Simonyi Center created a supportive environment in order to stay competitive.

Robert Riley told about the US government's perspective of building connections and entrepreneurships. He emphasized the importance of grass roots in economic stability and wealth, and explained that over 50 percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the US comes from small businesses. Therefore, it is essential to support people with former experience in different fields of business, government and NGO activities to get together and share their business ideas.

"There are so many smart people in Hungary who are creative and willing to take the risk, it is very impressive" - said the ambassador. "Since Hungary is smaller than the US, it is a lot easier to help young people to promote their creativity with the background of a supportive organisation like the Simonyi BDC."

Mr. Cséfalvay told about the economic challenge and contradiction between the excellent higher education system of the Transdanubian region and the great industry of the Eastern part of Hungary. In order to resolve this problematic gap, the combination of three factors; knowledge, innovation and networks are necessary. As he said: those one studying economics can understand these main engines of a well-operating and healthy market economy, which is impossible to work if the entrepreneurial spirit is missing. What do we need to do to make entrepreneurship flourish? Mr. Cséfalvay believes in mixing technology, talent and territory at a regional relevance level. Taking the example of Charles Simonyi, his personal achievement about going to the space was also the result of these three factors - he said. "New technologies change the way how innovations are carried out. It is a huge advantage of our age that today you can experiment and check your business model on the Internet."

Zsolt Páva, mayor of the city said in his speech that Pécs is full of potential, but in a very bad economic state. He expressed his eagerness to involve the Simonyi Center in the newly designed city development strategy of Pécs: "These weeks we are trying to put together the conception of the new development strategy for our city. I can promise that the city of Pécs will be a great partner for the Simonyi Center in the future and we will find the way to involve the organisation in our future plans to raise the attractiveness of Pécs."

The last speaker was Mr. Hugh Sherman from the Ohio University, who gave a brief summary on the past 25 years of the cooperation between the two partner universities. The main focus has been on exchanging best practices and learning from each other so far. His answer to the question how do we create the entrepreneurial spirit at university level was that there is a need to provide great financing and at the same time technical assistance for entrepreneurs: "We need to have our students think creative, solve problems better than before. That is a cultural change, hence, it's much more difficult to achieve."

Among further useful international programmes, the event was followed by the announcement of the winner of the first Simonyi International Video Pitch. Read more here »