CEED Regional Network Centers and Small Enterprise Assistance Funds (SEAF) organized CEED Regional  Conference on June 5, 2009 in Belgrade, Serbia.

CEED was proud to provide in its 3rd Regional Conference Mr. Charles Leadbeater, a leading authority on innovation and creativity, a reputable advisor of companies, cities and governments around the world on innovation strategy and the author of the international bestseller “We think” on the subject of collaborative innovation and how it can be catalyzed and managed to fuel the company’s growth. He considered that most innovation is not only about being creative. Creativity does not only come from special people placed in special places- labs, science parks and so on, and what really drive innovation are combination, conversation and collaboration.  If these are the keywords, then the entrepreneurs must find imaginative and challenging ways to be open and collaborative and to build good partnerships.

The world- wide web is changing the innovation process, creating a more open field in which business building ideas can be shared, products can be co-developed, allowing the  involvement of more people in this shared creativity.

CEED Regional event gathered pre-eminent thought leaders, including Dr. Michael Duncan, the Director of Open Innovation P&G Europe, Ms. Sasha Bezuhanova, the Director of CEE Region Hewlett-Packard, Mr. Chavdar Duchev, the Director of CEE Region, Pioneer (Dupont), Bulgaria and Mr. Stephen Eastham, an entrepreneur, angel investor, and director of the U.S. based New Vantage Group, who provided an overview on this new form of innovation, but they also offered practical collaborate tools and systematic innovation processes, which can be used to accelerate the companies' innovation processes and drive the businesses forward.

The Romanian representatives of the companies, participating to this event,  which are active in a wide range of industries such as furniture production and distribution (Greenforest Timisoara), printing and publishing (Media& Marketing Bucharest and Grafoprint Timisoara), financial services (National Credit Guarantee Fund for SMEs), IT (Lasting Software Timisoara and IP Devel Bucharest), human resources (Delta HR Timisoara), training and management consulting (Consilium Timisoara and CiSif Iasi), applied electronics (Cores Timisoara) had the opportunity to take part in matchmaking activities and workshops hosted by keynote speakers Mr. Charles Leadbeater and Dr. Michael Duncan on the subject "How entrepreneurs and their SMEs can effectively partner with other SMEs" and "How entrepreneurs and their SMEs can effectively partner with other Regional and Multinational companies".

The Romanian participants, who took part in this event, realized that improvement of their products is feasible through partnerships and appreciated the interesting private meetings with entrepreneurs from Slovenia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia.