According to President Danilo Tuerk, being innovative is an imperative of the present. He was happy to see a growing number of people in Slovenia proving themselves with new innovations.

However, the president wondered whether Slovenia offered all the conditions for the innovation potential to yield the desired results, as he addressed the opening of the two-day event organised by the Public Agency for Entrepreneurship and Foreign Investments (JAPTI) and the Economy Ministry.

Tuerk said Slovenia had become aware of the need to support innovation over the past years and investment in this area had increased, but too little had been done for an appropriate legal framework and better cooperation between science and new companies.

JAPTI director Igor Plestenjak stressed that Slovenians had always been present with important innovations like skis, the beehive or mathematical models, and that a record-breaking 235 new innovations had been registered this year.

However, due to their modesty, Slovenians do not have the best opinion of themselves as an innovative nation, he said, adding that JAPTI aimed at changing the popular opinion that being innovative is not worth the trouble.

The best ideas have no value if they cannot be marketed, Plestenjak pointed out and added that JAPTI issued EUR 1.1m of innovation vouchers to ten companies for co-funding external consultants, with the aim being a national or international registration of a patent, model or brand.

Ivo Boscarol, the boss of ultralight plane maker Pipistrel, said Slovenia had arduous and motivated people, and many good innovations, but what was missing was a vision. With a vision, strategies can follow for spreading the innovations outside Slovenia, he noted.

There is no innovation without a vision, Boscarol said, calling the innovators attending the conference visionaries. What is needed besides innovation and vision is ambition and courage, he added.

Boscarol's company was the winner of the forum, claiming the Golden Plaque for its four-seater Panthera modular plane. Among other innovations recognised by the jury was a low-priced dimming system for energy-efficient bulbs developed by Marko Cencur.

This year, the forum attracted innovators with a total of 235 innovations and 55 of them were selected for a display at the event - among them actual global novelties. Plestenjak said that the response to this year's forum was the highest ever.

The biggest number of applications - 111 - came from micro, small and medium-sized companies. Large companies on the other hand entered with only 16 innovations, even less than individual innovators or groups of innovators (79) and students (22). R&D institutions entered seven innovations.

Innovations included products (157), services (56) and business models and processes (22). According to jury head Matjaz B. Juric, the number of business models and processes at the forum was by far the highest this year.