DIHNET.EU

The northern province of Vojvodina in Serbia is known for being the most important agricultural area of the country. Even though agriculture is one of the strongest export sector of Serbia’s economy, the demands of a fast-growing national ICT sector has made the EU-candidate country to prioritise digital skills and technologies.

The Biosense Institute is located in Novi Sad, the second largest city and economic hub after Belgrade and now a hotbed of Information and Communication Technologies. Hence, it’s no wonder why this unique setting serves as a fruitful intersection between agriculture, ICT and food production.

We had the pleasure to interview Staša Stojkov Rošić (SSR), project manager at the
BioSense Institute and coordinator of the inhouse accelerator, and talk about how this young Digital Innovation Hub balances the aspects of tradition and innovation, and embraces the new technologies with the aim of enriching and bringing value to the region.

All stories have a beginning. How did the story of the BioSense Institute start?

SSR: The BioSense institute is a public institution part of the existing University of Novi Sad. We started our activity 6 years ago and took the opportunity when the Digital
Innovation Hubs appear to register in the JRC catalogue. We are a fully operative Digital Innovation Hub since 2015.

The founders come from research and industry backgrounds with the objective to have an organisation that doesn’t focus only on research, but also on implementation. The institute has an entrepreneurial mindset and a strong industrial approach, as it always had a business development department. It is located in a region with an agriculture tradition, but also with a history of technical oriented education. We have departments of electronics, robotics, biotechnology, data and knowledge development, among others. Thus, we have to operate in unison with traditional and innovative institutions.

Could you describe your DIH ecosystem?

SSR: Our ecosystem is a young one in many ways. As a country in the Balkans and South Eastern Europe, Serbia did not have an open market approach until a couple of decades ago. So, it was not so innovation oriented. Regardless of that, in this country there is a very strong technical expertise legacy of the socialist economic system. Even now you can find very strong technical institutions, and the school is also oriented to technical sciences. Unfortunately, the market business-oriented approach is still non-existent because it was not an educational component of the system. We [the Biosense Institute] bring that business approach and the connection with the EU ecosystem through the EU-funded projects, providing opportunities for the people and the regions.

In addition, we also work with Asian countries in different aspects of research and business collaboration as part of the Serbian international policy. We have a two-way scientific exchange with China and South Africa, and bilateral agreements with certain African countries.

Our different activities and projects target policy makers, end-users (i.e. farmers),
citizens and also high schools specialised in agriculture or attended by farmer’s children. We also work with business, early stage entrepreneurs and large companies. We focus on all the different players in the ecosystem, so we can create a community that fulfills the role of a one stop shop.

Agriculture is still a very traditional field and bringing innovation to a system where most of the business are family run and very manual can be an opportunity but also a challenge. In the last years, the development of policies has been primarily in the area of organic growth, but there are other areas where policies need to be developed. It’s important that the key players of agriculture in Europe have a long-term vision that is implemented gradually.