We explore for you, the eventplanner, what local industries and economic context/knowledge are innovative and relevant to be built into the planning of congresses or conferences. If you need smart local partners for contacts in your cluster, Vilnius offers a really dynamic approach to intl. organizers (and investors alike). We talked about the topic with our colleague from the Vilnius CVB, Jolanta Beniuliene and with the new director of the CVB’s roof organization Go Vilnius, Dr. Darius Udrys PhD.

As we try to better understand the available clusters and why they are in the country or in the city, we want to know how they avoid duplication between the main organizations for support and sourcing of foreign investments. While InvestLithuania looks to attract international investors into the country, GoVilnius have their own investment division for the capital only; both organizations work hand in hand and use synergies – avoiding to duplicate efforts. InvestLithuania attracts foreign investors and GoVilnius is the partner to accompany and help investors when they are settling in the capital. Through the CVB, this close co-operation with key industries in the city helps to attract and to support international congresses and has a reach into the main players in the segments.

All the people we met who are involved in business development and investment are young, very smart and working in an efficient and strategic way – they have a clear picture of the industries and research parties who are of priority for both the city as well as the country development.

If we look into Vilnius as the capital, the young population is obvious – and also all companies we saw were in the hands of young teams with a strong winning attitude. The capital attracts young people from both the country as well as those who have lived abroad, to come back and work in their own country – which also applies for Darius, who has worked and lived in the USA for most of his life.

With this condition, it makes sense to attract knowledge-intensive industries to Vilnius – and business process outsourcing is the strongest sector settling in FDI  for Vilnius at this time. Particularly financial technology is developed here, for large international banks (eg. Barclays and Western Union maintain big centres since more than 6 years already). The sector is a strong pull for talent from other places in Lithuania.

Is there sufficient talent available for all these efforts and investors? Darius mentioned that the talent is sufficient for the moment, but a certain shortage of IT people is showing. The university “produces” 1500 graduates per year, but to support the growing need, a specific Talent Visa has just been approved for Non-EU countries to attract and target the Eastern neighbors of Lithuania.

With the IT sector and Fintech – investors receive very good conditions to come to Vilnius. Lithuania is the fastest country for licensing in the EU and the governmental regulation is more of a guiding process – partnership rather than supervising. The direct access to financial exchange also helps a lot!

Game developers are another strong sector in both investment and start-ups with many talents coming from Ukraine and Belarus. Other priority industries: Life sciences, MedTech and laser technology.

We’ve asked Darius to give us a short message for the meetings industry. Listen yourself:

Please read all stories from our story line:

Your contact in Vilnius:
Jolanta Beniuliene
Head of Vilnius Tourism and Convention Bureau
Go Vilnius | The official international economic
development agency of the City of Vilnius
jolanta.beniuliene@vilnius.lt
tel. +370 5 212 1833
www.vilnius-convention.lt

Your contact at tmf:
Ulrike Kiesel
Project Manger Content & PR
u.kiesel@tmf-dialogue.com
+49 931 9002 114