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As mentioned by Petr Chladek in his post one of the regional innovation strategy projects in South Moravia is the Innovation vouchers (in Czech only) scheme supporting the research cooperation between SMEs and Brno universities. It has been started in August and the applications can be submitted until September, 25. Any Czech SME can get one of 36 vouchers valued up to 150k CZK (€ 6,000) for buying research services from Brno based universities.

Product, process or service development, testing and measurements, feasibility study, access to research facilities, prototyping, product design, innovative product business plan development, market analysis or marketing strategy, innovation or technology audit are the examples of proposals that can be supported by the vouchers if you find a university partner to realize them for you.
Continue reading ‘South Moravia is introducing innovation vouchers’

You already had a chance to read about the ICT Brokerage hosted in Brno on April 29-30 in the posts by Gunther Krumpak and Vlastimil Vesely here on nowEurope. I’m posting a few photos to show the atmosphere, audience and people networking in the Holiday Inn Brno. The Czech Innovation Day attracted about 140 attendees including guests from UK, Spain Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, Ireland, Macedonia, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, Greece, Italy, Denmark and four members of the European Commission.

Continue reading ‘The ICT Brokerage event in pictures’

In the framework of the Czech Republic’s EU presidency Masaryk University in Brno, CITT partner First Innovation Park and others organised an EU project information and brokerage event on April 30, 2009, where I had the honour and pleasure to speak. The hall was full, people interested and attentive. Allow me therefore this time to comment myself.

Originally I planned to talk about chances and risks in R&D and EU activities in Central Europe, but facing the present economic situation I thought I should rather offer general information on what is happening in the ICT markets in the region. Continue reading ‘ICT Brokerage Brno: ICT better off than other industries’

Within the CITT project we are looking for successful examples of applied research and ICT technologies that can be brought to the market. And we like reporting when a Central European university or a company succeed in pan-European competition. Here are two recent stories from Brno that may be inspiring for other FP projects and small start-ups.

Continue reading ‘MUFIN & Webnode: two success stories from Brno’

Vienna’s position as CEE’s ICT capital has suffered quite a blow by IBM’s announcement to move its CEE headquarters to Prague. Beware: I love Prague, I live there, but the decision’s wording “to move growth market activities to growth markets” sounds rather shallow if applied to the Czech Republic. Sure the country has growth potentials that the EU15 have lost long ago, but then why not move IBM CEE to Ukraine or Russia right away?

Continue reading ‘IBM CEE: Na shledanou to Vienna’

Moving forward, nowEurope will be not only mapping our topics and bringing news through the posts. We have integrated several data feeds to other community driven (or web 2.0 if you like) services in the right column.

Continue reading ‘Let’s share useful links and relevant photos’

The ICZ company belongs to the top system integrators in the Czech Republic. Thanks to its division focused on e-health it ranks among the leading companies in the field of hospital information systems (IS) on the local market. In 2006 the company turnover reached CZK 1 billion. I discussed the division history and its R&D activities with its product manager, Michal Schmidt.

He originally worked as a programmer in the state company Geofyzika. The opportunity to run his own business after 1989 led him and two other colleagues to join the SET joint stock company that won the tender for an information system in a newly built hospital in Breclav. At that time hospitals were introducing their first complex computer systems and so SET could build its system from scratch according to its ideas and without being limited by a reverse compatibility.

Continue reading ‘ICZ: infotizing health care as an opportunity for European projects’

Since it was established in 2000, the DC Concept Corporation located in Brno has been focusing on the development of unique object oriented information system including an integrated development CASE tool for creating and customizing applications. Currently, the company has twenty employees developing the system and providing technical and business support, and cooperates with approximately other 200 external consultants that deploy the system within the network of 40 partners in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I discussed the development plans with one of the company founders and the executive manager at the same time, Jiri Rychetsky.

Ever since the beginning, the development has been concentrated on creating an information system that would encompass tools for analysts and implementators to be able to easily model business processes for applications supporting production and business. So, the QI information system was developed, and the first installation dates back to 2001. “Due to unique system features that enable the system to be completely customized to fit specific customer’s needs from the data, function as well as price points of view, we named it the First elastic information system. Except for advanced functional and data adaptability, customers are interested in price elasticity, which means that they can choose from tens of options how to finance the system lease”, says Jiri Rychetsky.

Continue reading ‘DC Concept: A network player in the information systems market’

NETIES is not going to map the ICT sector “only” (well – it goes across other industries anyway). One of the emerging fields still more attractive for investors is biotechnology including genetic modifications, bioinformatics, medical devices and many others.

In October we had in Brno one of the “Best of Biotech” events. The next ones were organised also in Bratislava and Budapest. They are a part of the international initiative awarding the best biotech projects and the tour covering Austria, Slovenia, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary. The third annual international business plan competition, Best of Biotech – get your business started! is organised by Life Science Austria (LISA), a programme run by Austria Wirtschaftsservice on behalf of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Economy and Labour. The mission has been described as encouraging the development of the biotech scene in Austria, but also to improve cross-border collaboration between Austria and its neighbours.