In October 16th-19th SRC Bistra Ptuj together with the City municipality of Ptuj hosted partners of the project Innova Foster. During their visit to the oldest town in Slovenia they got to know the local start-up ecosystem of the Podravje region. It is one of 12 statistical regions in Slovenia and the statistical office of Republic Slovenia published that 16% of Slovenia’s population lived in the Podravska statistical region in 2015. The region generated 13% of the national GDP, but GDP per capita was the fifth lowest in the country. The region had slightly less than 26,000 enterprises with on average 4.6 persons employed.
Dr. Lidija Tušek from SRC Bistra Ptuj also introduced them the regulatory environment, financing of start-ups in Slovenia and the programme START-UP SLOVENIA.
During the first day good practice cases were introduced:
• Tovarna podjemov/Venture factory, University incubator, coworking, Start:up Maribor,
• Tkalka/Weaver, social entrepreneurship cooperative, incubator, coworking from Maribor and
• The House of Fürst, the coworking of creative entrepreneurs in Ptuj.
On the second day the partners took part in a workshop Building innovation & startup ecosystems as well as on the event involving local decision makers in the project and the dissemination event which was followed by the press conference to let the public know about the project.
