Away from the Mozart image, Salzburg has developed into a tech location in recent years with the help of Innovation Salzburg.
Making life easier for new and existing companies with various support services is just one of the tasks of Innovation Salzburg. It also recruits skilled workers abroad and supports research and science. The creative industries and the movie industry are also among the clientele of the business agency, which is an enterprise of the Province of Salzburg, the City of Salzburg, the Salzburg Economic Chamber and the Salzburg Federation of Industries. Managing Director Walter Haas can point to amazing successes and hidden champions, and also has a lot of plans for the future for the business and research location Salzburg.
![](http://weltmeister.cc/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/S1-Walter-Haas-c-Innovation-Salzburg.png)
© Innovation Salzburg / Benedikt Schemmer
Internationally, Salzburg is associated with Mozart, ‘The Sound
of Music’ and mountains. Does Salzburg need an image correction
to position itself as a business location?
Walter Haas: In tourism and culture, Salzburg is very visible, internationally
successful and at the top of its game. What is overlooked
in Salzburg due to the dominance of art, culture and ultimately
tourism is the strong research and innovation expertise. We have
many hidden champions who are world market leaders in their
own right but are not particularly visible as a brand. In 2016/17,
we dealt very intensively with the topic of Salzburg as a research
and innovation location and completely repositioned ourselves
with a new science and innovation strategy. A central theme here
is that we highlight the other Salzburg. We are communicating
many achievements of our hidden champions and we are bringing
many technology companies that are growing rapidly to the fore.
Salzburg is one of the most important headquarters locations in
Austria; some companies manage not only their nationwide business
here, but also their business in Europe and worldwide. We
have a very intensive and vibrant creative industries sector. So,
Salzburg is a well-diversified and successful business location that
is not always visible. In terms of gross domestic product, we are
number one among the Austrian provinces and among the top 20
of the 250 European regions. In 2022, we had the lowest unemployment
in all of Austria, a very high labour productivity, and in
tourism, Tyrol and Salzburg are way ahead. Salzburg is already a
very strong business location.
How do you achieve a higher visibility of companies, and do
you focus on the high-tech, IT or biotech sectors?
Haas: We have committed ourselves to intelligent profiling of the
location, and there are five fields that we are pursuing intensively
and in which Salzburg is strong: life sciences, information and
communication technologies as well as data research, the creative,
art and culture sector, but also Green Tech, i.e. intelligent solutions
for the green transformation. Here, a lot of our work revolves
around construction and sustainable materials, primarily when it
World Champion Austria
Innovation Salzburg
© Innovation Salzburg/Benedikt Schemmer
Austria’s secret hotspot
for IT and creatives
Away from the Mozart image, Salzburg has developed into a tech location
in recent years with the help of Innovation Salzburg.
Walter Haas is at the helm of Innovation Salzburg.
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comes to wood. And we focus very strongly on intelligent tourism,
sports and the leisure industry with know-how and technology.
These are the profiles that we are pushing, where we have tech
companies in the background and where we have suitable research
and education. It is precisely in the triangle of education,
research and business that the quality of the location for the more
knowledge-intensive companies is created, and this is also where
our further developments come into play. This interplay creates
innovation, and knowledge becomes processes, products and services.
![](http://weltmeister.cc/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/S2-Unternehmensberatung-c-Innovation-Salzburg-1024x683.png)
© Innovation Salzburg / Benedikt Schemmer
Martin Klässner from Make Visions said that Salzburg is a good
IT location because there is little competition. Do you see it that
way too?
Haas: We have very good IT education offers in Salzburg, where
young people are being trained. But there is just as much of a shortage
of IT specialists in Salzburg as there is in the whole of Europe
and worldwide. We can see that our local training and the attractiveness
as a place to work are working in our favour. We can see
that investments in education are bearing fruit. We have our core
education in the IT sector at the University of Applied Sciences and
the University of Salzburg, and we see that this is not only a very
good driver of growth for established companies, but also for many
start-ups that emerge from it. Salzburg’s focus is on data research
and geoinformatics on the one hand and industrial informatics,
automation and cybersecurity with a focus on secure energy informatics
on the other. These are our most important assets.
What distinguishes Salzburg as a business location?
Haas: I think that the attractiveness of the location, the good geographical
position, combined with short distances for decisions and
quick access to knowledge, are certainly essential factors. The
strong Salzburg brand, a creative scene and the quality of leisure
time are a good mix that also attracts young people, even if we have
a different image when it comes to art and culture.
![](http://weltmeister.cc/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/S3-IT-Forschung-c-LMZ-Otto-Wieser-2-1024x683.png)
© LMZ / Otto Wieser
You support companies ‘on their way into the future’. What
does that look like?
Haas: From the first idea and a company that
was founded to the established company – from
the carpentry shop around the corner to our leading
companies like Red Bull and Palfinger –
everyone can come to us or is involved with us.
As an innovation agency, we are a one-stop shop,
whereby we try to support companies on their
way into the future. This also applies to companies
from abroad. When investments, research
and innovation projects or location searches are
pending, when there are questions about property
rights, subsidies and financing, companies
get everything they need to implement their
business idea more easily. We put solutions in the foreground and
try to give the companies all help they need for their business plan,
which we often develop together. As a rule, we define a project
together, for which we also set up attractive financing and subsidies
from the federal government, the Province and the EU, and accompany
it. We have built up a very good innovation ecosystem in
Salzburg. Start-ups, established companies, research and educational
institutions and many more work together through our network.
People who want to make a leap into the future with their projects
also get access to the knowledge they need or to development partners
from the colleges and universities with us. We can offer this
with partners throughout Austria and all over Europe via short, fast
routes.
One of your fields is support for research –
what does this look like?
Haas: Since 2016, we have had our scientific innovation
strategy WIS, which defines what we
want to achieve in innovation and research. In
connection with this, the Province of Salzburg
has also launched a very consistent investment
and funding programme and set up a service
point for all research and innovation topics in the
province, which is located in-house. It is a onestop
shop for researchers. Since 2016/17, we
have launched more than 200 projects, triggered
180 million euros of investment in research institutions
and in the economy, and supported around 200 research
jobs. A lot has happened there. Researchers from universities, colleges
and companies come to us with exciting projects, for which
we help, like a small incubator, to translate a project proposal into
a work programme and a calculation, and to find the right funding
programme and partners. Good ideas and quality approaches that
bring something to the location can be implemented quickly. The
largest research funding in the province of Salzburg, ten million
euros, went to the University of Salzburg to establish a research
focus at the new Faculty of Digital Analytical Sciences. This includes
a total of seven new professorships in the field of artificial
intelligence and digitisation and a research college for 20 junior
scientists. This extends to smaller projects, such as in the construction
industry, where we are looking at the topics of carbon-neutral
construction and recycled concrete. This is a broad field, and a lot
has happened in it in Salzburg in recent years.
![](http://weltmeister.cc/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/S4-Filmlocation-Die-Toten-von-Salzburg-c-SATEL-FILM-Birgit-Probst-Photographie-1024x683.png)
© SATEL Film / Birgit-Probst Photographie
How do you support creative professionals?
Haas: Salzburg has the second highest share of creative enterprises
in the whole of Austria. Salzburg is the most important media
location in Austria, more than 50 percent of the revenues in the film
industry are generated here. This is mainly due to Red Bull Media
being located here. That’s why we have a very strong creative industry
cluster in Salzburg, which creates value throughout Austria.
There are about 3,250 creative enterprises, in the city of Salzburg
this is already more than every tenth business. So, we are very well
positioned, and Salzburg is a creative hotspot. We are experiencing
through the digital transformation that every company is in some
way becoming a communication company and is integrated into
digital processes and social media worldwide. Besides Red Bull,
Vienna in particular always advertises itself
as a perfect film location. What does Salzburg
have to offer?
Haas: Salzburg as a film location offers a one-stop
shop for all film projects, from location scouting,
on-site servicing of projects, funding and financing
to successful execution. Salzburg is a very
attractive film location, and we can offer many
exciting backdrops throughout the province. In
the past 20 years there have been about 180 film
projects executed with the help of film funding
from the Province of Salzburg. We also advertise
abroad for film productions to come to Salzburg.
Of course, this also has a huge effect on the positioning and marketing
of the location and creates added value.
![](http://weltmeister.cc/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/S4-Ambassador-Daniel-Kusiak-c-Innovation-Salzburg-1024x683.png)
© Innovation Salzburg
What are the biggest challenges for the business location in
the coming years and how do you convince professionals to come
to Salzburg?
Haas: We have a very good geographical location between Vienna,
Munich and Milan. We have also proven to be a very attractive place
to work. The biggest challenge now is the issue of skilled workers
and the training of future skilled workers. We are expanding study
programmes and aligning them with the needs of the economy. We
have founded the initiative ‘Work in Salzburg’, a still very young
initiative that makes Salzburg visible as a place
to work and is aimed at foreign skilled workers
in certain target markets. Above all, we try to
provide jobs in the STEM sector by presenting
our hidden champions. Salzburg offers many
opportunities as a place to work because there
are many exciting, attractive companies. For
foreign professionals, the focus is on support as
part of a one-stop shop. If students want to come
here after graduation, we support onboarding,
we have a welcome service and help clarify legal
issues. We are also well positioned on a federal
level with the Red-White-Red Card (NB: a work
permit for non-EU-citizens). To make it easier to
stay here, there are expat meets, and we always do something with
our international workers in Salzburg. This initiative will be massively
expanded in the near future. It is a challenge to be an exciting
location for young people, for creative and bright minds and for
well-educated talents and to have local offers. That is our mission,
which we are trying to implement in the best possible way.