One of the concrete future strategic objectives of economic prosperity is improving the quality and effectiveness of knowledge transfer from scientific and academic institutions dealing with research and development of modern engineering materials and advanced accompanying technologies to the industrial praxis. The virtual network for technological innovations MatNet has been developed recently for that purpose in Slovakia. MatNet organizes courses not only for developers and designers, but also for university teachers, scientific workers and doctoral students. The main aim is the training in new complex principles of structural and functional components creation, on the basis of proper material selection with regard to functionality, type of operation loading and cost of product or construction and synchronized optimization of component outline and appropriate production technology. The modern educational software Cambridge Engineering Selector (CES EduPack?) developed by Granta Design Ltd. has been applied during educational process. The participants of the courses have an opportunity to work on one's own with real databases containing properties of nearly all current materials, as well as parameters of modern technologies and to learn the use of these databases in proposals of optimum design of components for various industrial applications.
The main communication platform of innovation network is the web portal MatNet - Slovakia (http://www.matnet.sav.sk), gathering and depositing useful information about materials and technologies via various Slovak and international sources. The main ambition of the network MatNet is to enable developers from Slovak industrial companies (working e.g. in automotive, electrical, mechanical, building, aircraft, chemical, food and other industrial sectors) more effectively cooperate with scientists and experts from the academic community in order significantly to enhance the quality of their products.
This contribution aims further to ever-rising demand of research driven clusters with specific focus on automotive industry in the region of central Europe. The unique guide to clustering the research institution, universities, R&D companies, SMEs, large industrial companies and financial institutions has been outlined in this contribution. Demonstrated approach to clustering activities helps to bring both public and private R&D results closer to regional industrial companies and thus fulfil their R&D needs in order not only to increase their innovation capacity but particularly to improve their competitiveness on world-wide markets.