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The President of the Republic to the Conference of the International Association of Science Parks "Serving the companies: enlarging the market of business communities in and around Science and Technology Parks" on June 10, 2002, in Tallinn
10.06.2002


Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am glad to welcome you here, in Tallinn. The fact that the conference of your worthy organization is taking place in Tallinn is for us a great responsibility. At the same time, it is an international recognition of our work done over the last decade and a stimulus for the future.

Estonia, like many other East European countries, started transition to the market economy more than ten years ago - in times characterized by rapid development and expansion of new technologies around the world.

The development of our transition economy was unsteady, but it still proved that starting off by zero could turn out to be simpler than renewal of the old. With the help of foreign investments, in many areas we were able to implement new technologies and innovative solutions worked out elsewhere in the world.

And so, looking back at our recent past, we must admit that Estonia and many other countries have been consumers of innovation. Yet, in order to survive in international competition it is inescapable that one produced more and more innovation himself. We are increasingly becoming aware of that also in Estonia, at the level of both enterprises and of the state.

An enterprise operating in the conditions of market economy and hard competition does need innovation. I even would say that it is a matter of life and death. As we could learn, for instance from our northern neighbours, it is a duty of state to support development and extensive innovation.

We in Estonia, so far, have interpreted state-level support mostly in a broader sense. Our economic policy is trying to provide favourable conditions to set up and develop enterprises. In other words - conditions for entrepreneurs to experiment and to test new ideas.

It is self-evident that developing enterprises also need well-qualified workforce. For this reason, the employment policy of an economy of rapidly developing structure should not be targeted at keeping as many jobs as possible, but at enabling people to find a new job as quickly as possible.

Dear Conference Members,

In an age where competition has become global, such general measures like creating favourable business environment and training qualified workforce alone are not sufficient any more. That's why science and technology parks have become an integral part of purposeful innovation policy. They have particular importance in supporting new innovative enterprises as well as small and medium-sized enterprises. It is extremely vital that as many enterprises as possible had the chance of putting their ideas into effect. That will create preconditions for people to earn a more equal share of benefits of an economy based on knowledge.

With view to what I have said, I am very pleased that the present conference lays great emphasis first of all on international dimension, and on small and medium-sized enterprises. I believe that your following exchange of ideas will provide a chance of learning both from each other's mistakes and successes. And for this, I wish you great success!


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