Partnering in Sheffield UK

Dear Colleagues,

Today between 10-13 hours, I participated to a marketing conference in METU Technopark KOSGEB premises which was organised by UK Trade Agency UKTI and NorthEast Development organisation of UK.

They had well prepared powerpoint presentations, how wonderful incentives and low taxes they have, how low their labor manhour rates are (14% less than UK average), how well positioned they are, how close to reputable universities.

However I feel that if we replace the name "Sheffield" with "Ankara", "University of Sheffield" with "METU" (Middle East Technical University", plus a few names more, we can present the same presentations on behalf of METU Technopark companies in NorthEast part of UK.

In METU, we have the best university in Turkey, and the best functioning Technopark inside. They speak mother tongue English by birth, whereby we speak text book English which is understood by everyone better.

We have more than 100 new companies in METU Technopark, and more than 1000 brilliant young engineers, software experts. So we have overlapping software products on both sides.

Therefore we feel that instead of selling their products here, and our there, we need to investigate how to make cooperation, how to work together, how make partnering, in selling joing software products, in North East of Europe through NorthEast region UK, and The Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe through METU Technopark.

At this time, we do not know the future of European Union after polls in France and Holland. Mr. Tony Blair decided not to go to polls for new EU constitution, since he can predict the outcome. Therefore we need to have "B" plan without EU and investigate possibilities of more cooperation between similar industries.

We work in energy business. We have different software companies in cooperation, the most of them are from North America or Continental Europe. We work in renewables, green energy, more utilisation of natural gas, CHP, CCPP and conventional fossile fuel fired steam power plants. We always need software for new power plant contruction.

Softwares are intellectual work intensive outputs. An engineer may receive 100 Euros per manhour in the North east of UK; whereby we pay only 10 or so per high qualified engineering manhour in METU Technopark.

Similarly the lowest rate per manhour of unqualified worker could be around 20-25 Euros equivalent in UK, whereby it is around 2-3 Euros in Turkey.

So pricewise METU Technopark could be cheaper, hence more competitive, and better positioned in marketing.

Therefore we appreciate the time, money and effort that our UK collegues have spent in this mission, we feel that we better try to investigate how to work together to sell similar overlapping software products together in our respective markets.

Your comments are always welcome.


COMMENTS,

Dear Haluk...I read this through twice and failed to find any connection to the subject of writing. Have I missed something, or have you gone off on a tangent?
Suzianne, Nebraska, USA
**** Plan C: BUY AMERICAN **** (LOL)


I hope you will receive some response to your brilliant suggestions for marketing cheap Turkish human beans with the help of Brits.
AKIN KOSETORUNU; Ankara Turkey