Ekkotek High-tech business incubator is a private company legally named Ekkotek Ltd. which serves as the Technology Transfer Office for both the Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute and N.E.T.S. Mediterranean Graduate School of Applied Social Cognition. Ekkotek won its first EC funded project, Med.Pride, in 2001. It pioneered in promoting the idea of bicommunal business cooperation organising conferences and workshops including:
- Women in business: Breaking the Glass ceiling
- The name of the Game is choice: Women realising their aspirations
- 3rd International SME Conference “SMEs Facing the Change”
| Ekkotek Ltd | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Main organ | Board of Directors |
| Budget | ca 150,000 |
| Staff | 4-6 |
| Volunteers | 1-2 |
| Website | www.ekkotek.com |
Pioneers in developing wisdom tools
Ekkotek has upgraded Cogniscope v.2 developing Cogniscope v.3 which is compatible with MAC computers, runs on Windows versions after the XP and includes requirements of the international community of theoreticians and practitioners as these were documented in the SDDP Design of the next generation Cogniscope/Webscope Co-Laboratory.
Ekkotek's major contribution is IdeaPrism, available for all platforms. This App is continuously been upgraded. It revolutionizes the application of Structured Democratic Dialogue by introducing virtual interactions rendering dialogues social networking friendly. It also introduces video clarifications and distributed Interpretive Structural Modeling processes.
A number of other Interpretive Structural Modeling implementations include open source tools developed in LiveCode as well as the Interpretive Structural Modeling core software used in Logosofia, a product developed for the Ministry of Education of Michigan, USA.
Ekkotek as a high-tech business incubator
- GNOUS Labs Ltd. is a young start-up that emerged out of the Mental Attributes Profiling System research conducted at the [[Cyprus Neuroscience and Technology Institute in the late 90s and early 21st century.
- BoardMeeting, is a software-hardware innovative solution which provides real-time access to everything being discussed during a physical meeting, immersing the participants of the meeting in the content matter.
- IdeaPrism is the first application that attempts to scale-up Structured Democratic Dialogue to engage hundreds of participants.
People who worked for Ekkotek
| # | Name | Role | Project | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maria Symeonides | Co-Founder | Med.Pride | 2000-2003 |
| 2 | Yiannis Laouris | Co-Founder | Med.Pride | 2000-present |
| 3 | Panikos Michael | CEO of Incubator | Set up Ekkotek as Incubator funded by Ministry of Industry | 2000-2001 |
| 4 | Nikoletta Koutsakou | Project Coordinator | Med.Pride
Women in business: Breaking the Glass ceiling The name of the Game is choice: Women realising their aspirations 3rd International SME Conference “SMEs Facing the Change” |
2002-2004 |
| 5 | Xenia Constantinou | Event Organizer | Med.Pride
Women in business: Breaking the Glass ceiling The name of the Game is choice: Women realising their aspirations 3rd International SME Conference “SMEs Facing the Change” |
2002-2004 |
| 6 | Elia Petridou | Project Coordinator | Med.Pride
Women in business: Breaking the Glass ceiling The name of the Game is choice: Women realising their aspirations 3rd International SME Conference “SMEs Facing the Change” |
2002-2004 |
| 7 | Andreas Drakos | Director | All | 2009-today |
| 8 | Soteris Demetriou | Programmer | Cogniscope, IdeaPrism | 2011-2012 |
| 9 | Katerina Fotiou | Programmer | Fairy Tales, Cogniscope, IdeaPrism | 2012-present |
| 10 | Eleni Philippou | Programmer | eTPCK, Gogniscope | 2012-2017 |
| 11 | Annagrace Messa | Sales | Websites | 2012-2015 |
| 12 | Aspasia Ksidea | Graphics Designer | All | 2013-present |
| 13 | Savia Christou | Programmer | Pantognwstis, Gogniscope | 2013-2016 |
| 14 | Constantina Spanoude | Programmer | Pantognwstis, Gogniscope | 2013-2015 |
| 15 | Charikleia Sotiri Zachariade | Programmer | Pantognwstis | 2016-2017 |
| 16 | Constantinos Mavropetros | Intern | Pantognwstis | 2014-2015 |
| 17 | George Voudias | Intern | Pantognwstis | 2014-2015 |
| 18 | Lorena Ndreu | Intern | Various | |
| 19 | Nicoleta Jiorzi | Business Development | Gnous | 2017 |
| 20 | Ivi Solomou | Business Development | Gnous | 2017-2018 |
| 21 | Marina Fergeson | Sales | All, Websites | 2012-2015 |
| 22 | Chrystalla Miltiadou | Programmer | Pantognwstis | 2013-2014 |
| 23 | Stella Philippou | Accountant | All | 2017-today |
| 24 | Monica Pericleous | Developer | Pantognwstis | 2016-2017 |
| 25 | Aliki Economides | Project Management | ManyMe | 2017-present |
A word of history
Ekkotek was founded in 2000 as the first High-tech business incubator in Cyprus. It has also won the first competition by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Tourism for a £450,000 subsidy along with 3 others. Following an unfortunate chain of events Ekkotek remained for more than 10 years inactive. The decision of the government to use the funds foreseen for the incubators to the beauty contest and the subsequent refusal of the parliament to approve additional budgets, as well as the fact that one of the shareholders of Ekkotek was Cyber Group Ltd. a group of companies that became unstable as a result of the 2000 stock market crash, resulted in the Ministry terminating the contract with brief processes not permitting legal defence.Ekkotek re-launched operations as a high-tech incubator in 2014 with the initiatives of Andreas Drakos focusing its first activities in website development. Ekkotek's first employee was Yiannis Laouris