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.

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.

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. 150_151 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.