Business Park from Backi Petrovac is the first private industrial zone in Serbia. The basic idea behind this concept is to create a business community in which the business life will be easier for those who join. Common services can be shared, common orders can be bulked, and know-how can be exchanged – all at the same place. Consequently, the companies operating in the Business Park Backi Petrovac, disregarding whether they rent or buy property, have lower overhead costs and can focus better on their core business. Management team of the Business Park is also always there to help with the contacts of advices.
In line with this innovative concept for Serbian business environment, Business Park management has established a cooperation with the two well know scientific institutions – the Faculty of Applied Sciences from Amsterdam and the Faculty of Technical Sciences from Novi Sad. First step within this cooperation will be to include the students of both institutions in the development of the Business Park concept. Therefore, two groups of students, Dutch and Serbian group, will visit the Business Park on the 24th and 25th of September 2012, and it will be their first fact finding mission. They will use the opportunity to collect all the necessary information they need in order to prepare a high quality seminar paper, which should result in two different points of view how this business community should be developed. Young professionals will have the opportunity to interact with each other and with the real business world, while the Business Park management team will get some fresh and creative ideas, useful for further steps in the development phase. Once the seminar papers are finished by both groups, Business Park management team will get the results, and students will be graded by their professor for the field work they have done.
It is rather rare case in Serbia that science and economy are interconnected in the proper way, and the fact that the Business Park will enable young professionals to take part in the real project can definitely be seen as an example of good practice of corporate social responsibility. All the parties in this project hope that this visit, and this cooperation overall, might motivate other companies to include young generations in their work and provide practice, while in the same enabling the inflow of new ideas into the business environment. Nevertheless, another positive outcome of this project is the fact that Serbian students will have the opportunity to exchange opinions with their colleagues from abroad, therefore widening the potential for future cooperation among themselves and bilateral relations between the two institutions.
