Yesterday, the first general assembly of Gent BC was held in the dean's offices of the Ghent University (UGent). Outerthought, together with SMO bvba, were the only SMEs to join this new initiative right from the start as an associate member, with Steven also joining the board of Gent BC.
Gent BC is a new initiative
from the Ghent city administration, the University of Ghent, and the Provincial
Development Agency and aims to become the prime online and real-life networking
platform to stimulate technological entrepreneurship and innovation in the Ghent
region. The goals of Gent BC are threefold: to combine and strengthen efforts of
all actors in the Ghent knowledge economy, to stimulate academic, technological
and innovative entrepreneurship, and to promote the Ghent knowledge region in
Flandres and abroad.
Outerthought is the only SME currently joining the Gent BC board, and while our primary aim obviously is to connect with all involved parties, many of them being academic institutions and large organisations, we also want to represent the specific needs and priorities of innovative and technology-driven SMEs.
It is often said that SMEs have difficulties collaborating with academic research institutions or exploiting governmental support to grow their business and thus also local employment, compared with larger organisations and research centra. By joining Gent BC, Outerthought wants to cut this longstanding prejudice short and try to bring a pragmatic, SME-reality-sized voice to this new innovation platform.
More specifically, in the context of Gent BC, we aim to further professionalize our R&D activities around Kauri and related web development methodologies, hopefully in collaboration with other Gent BC members. Also, we want to further steer the development of Daisy towards a leading framework for knowledge-centric content applications.