REPRESENTATIVES OF FINNISH VTT VISITED PORT

On December 11th and 12th 2018 PORT Polish Center for Technology Development hosted a delegation of a leading research and development center, VTT from Finland. The visit took place within the framework of the “Strategic Reform Support System” project, financed by the European Commission, which is dedicated to public administration units realizing structural changes, the desired effect of which is an exchange of experience and the good practices between the top research centers.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd is one of the world leading centers, which has developed solutions for functioning, managing and planning development strategies for research and development institutions. Poland is in the course of preparations of an act on that matter and is still developing the above mentioned solutions. Therefore, the representatives of VTT, which has many years of practice in developing functioning strategies of the various research units, are able to present what an efficient network should look like, meaning a system that brings institutes and other types of research organizations together.

The goal of the visit of VTT was also to obtain information on how to take advantage of the solutions practiced in Finland which facilitate the creation and the following operations of such a network. In the context of creating the Łukasiewicz Network, the cooperation with VTT, which ranks fourth in the Horizon 2020 program fundraising ranking, is very important for implementing the ideas of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and for the functioning of PORT, which wants to draw on the standards from the best.

Robert Napora of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education told during the visit that it is important to get to know what is the full operations spectrum of such institution as a research network. – How to manage the talents of such network, how to obtain the proper employees, how to reward them later on, how to lead their careers, to motivate the scientists to improve their qualifications, as well as how to enable them to earn degrees – without providing postgraduate studies. According to Mr Napora – The network is to bring together the institutes focusing on applicable research, but the emphasis should also be placed on the personal growth of the scientists – including the aforementioned earning degrees, being a natural element of a researchers career. For this purpose, using the standards of VTT, institutes of the Polish network should closely cooperate with universities, but in a manner which is profitable also for the universities. The main goal of such an organization as PORT is creating new solution and innovations for business, mainly for industry, but within those operations scientific achievements will arise which will be particularly beneficial for the academic establishments. A good example of an instrument combining both elements are the implementation postgraduate studies, allowing the scientists to take practice in research for business and follow their scientific career at the same time.

The essence of such organizations as VTT or PORT is indeed to combine the academic research and the cooperation with business. Napora has described a pathway for implementing those ideas by saying that at first the Ministry presented the very concept of it, then the Ministry representatives observed the Finnish model solutions and the following stage is the visit of Finns to Poland, where they are taking a tour of a couple of our organizations and institutes meant to be integrated into the planned Łukasiewcz network, including PORT. At the end of the VTT representatives’ visit to Poland they will present recommendations (in form of a report) for the particular organizations and the future research network, saying how to optimize management processes, what mistakes to avoid and which of the practical, best solutions are worth implementing.

During the visit to PORT the guests from VTT got to know how is the company operating and that subject was presented in details by Andrzej Dybczyński, PhD, Managing Director of PORT. Afterwards, Anna Chmura, Andrzej Dybczyński and Anna Kolbe-Panek took the delegation for the guided tour around the campus, which served as an introduction to the presentation on the PORT’s research infrastracture, presented by Anna Chmura. In the evening the guests were invited for local specialities to Karczma Lwowska at the Wrocław town square and on the following day Justyna Gajewska, head of the human resource department responsible for the selection of personnel, presented the HR system of PORT. At the end a panel discussion “100 questions to VTT” took place and Andrzej Dybczyński, PhD summarized the fruitful visit.