Tera Tehnopolis d.o.o. was founded in 2002 as a joint venture of the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, the City of Osijek, and the Osijek-Baranja County, with the aim to develop knowledge-based entrepreneurship by using new and significantly improved existing technologies.
Tera focuses on connecting science with the economy, as well as ensuring infrastructural, financial, and consultancy support to innovative and technology-based projects. Through its activities and the implementation of various EU and national projects, Tera Tehnopolis creates conditions for a quick and successful transformation of research results and innovations into products that are competitive on the market and encourages international transfer and development of small and medium enterprises. On a daily basis, Tera provides business support in all aspects of business operations, especially business planning, business internationalisation, access to funding, and intellectual property management and protection.
Also, as a business incubator, Tera provides office space and workstations for the realisation of knowledge-based projects and conducts technology, entrepreneurship and IP related educational activities, acting as the leading regional hub for technology transfer in Eastern Croatia. TERA also subcontracts, organises and executes contracted research for industrial partners and is one of the pioneers in rapid 3D prototyping in the region.
Over the years, Tera has accumulated extensive experience in conducting promotional and educational activities, as well as in organising international conferences with more than 100 participants. Tera also has rich experience in the education sector and has developed a comprehensive business planning education programme based on the concept defined in the University textbook “Innovative3 Entrepreneurship”, written by prof. Ivan Štefanić. Within the I-DARE project, Tera has developed an educational e-tool and a manual for business plan writing, available in Croatian, English, and Hungarian. Tera is the main organiser of Be the Role Model™, the competition in business plan writing, through which it encourages entrepreneurship and innovations in all sectors.
Tera has been a member of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) since it was launched by the European Commission in 2008. Within the Network, Tera advises SMEs on EU legislation and standards, access to international markets, EU funding and application to EU tenders, energy and resource efficiency, management, and intellectual property protection. It also provides key account management services to businesses benefitting from the Horizon 2020 SME instrument, empowering them to implement their projects and plan the next development phase. Furthermore, Tera has organised and participated in the organisation of numerous brokerage events focused on a variety of topics, including innovation, environment, key enabling technologies (KETs), ICT, technology transfer, agro-food, etc.
As an authorised representative at the State Intellectual Property Office and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), Tera offers consultancy services regarding the intellectual property protection and management and provides support during the entire intellectual property registration process at both the national and EU levels.
Following Croatia’s accession to the EU, Tera joined the EEN IP Helpdesk Ambassador programme in October 2013, ensuring the provision of high-quality and reliable consultancy services to Croatian businesses in the field of intellectual property protection. Professor Ivan Štefanić, PhD, director of Tera Tehnopolis d.o.o., is one of the two registered IP Helpdesk Ambassadors in Croatia.
The European IP Helpdesk is a service managed by the European Commission’s Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME), with policy guidance provided by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. It supports cross-border SME and research activities to manage, disseminate and valorise technologies and other intellectual property (IP) rights and assets at the EU level. The European IP Helpdesk’s main goal is to support IP capacity building along the full scale of IP practises, from raising awareness to strategic use and successful exploitation. The strengthening of IP competencies focuses on EU SMEs, participants of EU funded projects, as well as the EU innovation stakeholders for an increased translation of IP into the EU innovation ecosystem.
Moreover, Tera has recently become a partner of the Latin America IP SME Helpdesk. Latin America IP SME Helpdesk is a helpline aiming to raise awareness and enhance the intellectual property management and protection of SMEs from the European Union and the associated countries that are already operating or intend to access the Latin America market. The Latin America IP Helpdesk provides free, expert, and confidential IP advice on topics such as trademark registration, patent application, and design registration in Latin America. It also provides different resources for learning how to manage intellectual property rights in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Furthermore, Tera Tehnopolis is a part of the EIT community, and as of 2018, the EIT FOOD HUB Croatia. TERA participates in the activities that provide internships in leading European companies in the food sector, trains state, regional, and local government staff, and encourages students and innovators to prepare innovative business plans. TERA regularly conducts promotional activities and organises Awareness events and additional events to promote the initiative. TERA is also a consortium partner of the Horizon2020 project KET4CleanProduction, within which it promotes the use of new and advanced technologies to manufacturing SMEs and helps them write technology requests and apply for micro-grants, trains new EEN partners and has developed an online education material, implemented into the KET4CP platform. TERA regularly promotes and informs on all other project activities. As a consortium partner in the INTERREG project KETGATE, Tera provides support to manufacturing SMEs, connects them with BSOs and RTOs, and helps them apply for funding. Also, TERA evaluates companies’ innovation capacity, using the RESPICE innovation audit methodology, developed within the Project, and regularly accompanies its clients to B2B meetings held within the project, acting as a mediator between SMEs an RTOs. Tera is also an intermediary organisation within the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, a cross-border programme that facilitates the exchange of entrepreneurial and managerial experience. The exchange is implemented by a stay of a new or potential entrepreneur with a well-experienced entrepreneur running an SME in another country. In the past five years, more than 2,500 pairs of entrepreneurs have benefitted from the programme.