We’re spinning a snowball of innovation. Ostrava has enormous development potential

Ostrava as a place to live with great innovation potential

How does the Moravian-Silesian Innovation Center help companies?

The purpose of our existence is the development of the region, especially its innovation ecosystem. If I were to simplify it, it’s about improving the environment for people who want to do new things. In this environment, quality education, research and development, or cooperation on new technologies, their implementation, and introduction into companies are crucial. Startups are an important part of a functioning innovation ecosystem, or rather the process of founding and growing new companies with aspirations to sell new products and services to the world under their own brand.

What do you offer to companies?

We started with the MSIC Expand and expand our services every year. When owners of small or medium-sized businesses are struggling with a strategic change necessary for their competitiveness, they turn to us. We connect them with someone from practice who has successfully implemented that change in international business. Thanks to MSIC, they don’t have to reinvent the wheel and waste time learning something that an experienced entrepreneur can help them with very quickly. This service has been used by the most clients so far. In addition, we offer a whole range of other interconnected services, které klienti využívají podle potřeby. For example, discounted space rental, capital for business financing, mentors or shared laboratories. All these things are available today in regions that want to be globally economically competitive or similar innovation centers are established.

And what are your results?

We have helped realize a total of 610 change projects in 320 companies headquartered or operating in the Moravian-Silesian region. These companies had a turnover of over 30 billion in 2020 and employed over 9,000 people. We are successful in discovering new clients with products and services with high growth potential and a desire to sell them on global markets. Half of our settled clients collaborate with universities, and 84% have their own research and development. And all of this in just 5 years; our anniversary is on July 1st. We want to celebrate this journey in September and, together with our clients, shareholders, and other partners, reflect on what the future holds. If you are interested in innovation and business in the Moravian-Silesian region, we would love to see you there.

We want to spin a snowball of innovation that will not stop and will bring regional development

How does regional development relate to your activities?

We want to reach the stage of maturity of the innovation ecosystem where there are many private initiatives around us building on the original impulse of public investment through MSIC. So that the money invested by the region and the city of Ostrava in the local business ecosystem creates a snowball that will not stop and will spontaneously grow with the energy of the private sector. This sector will create high added value through innovation and sell it to the world under its own brand, thus bringing wealth back to the Moravian-Silesian region. An example of our client is Skladon. A rapidly growing company that has made it, among other things, to the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list, the most prestigious ranking of very fast-growing companies. But great things can be done in any area of human activity. I always say, do you want your children and grandchildren to spend time with you here, or do you want to travel thousands of kilometers to see them? So, that’s what we’re doing. We take care to ensure that your children and their children can work in this region and don’t need to move away permanently because there will be a good economy and opportunities for self-realization here.

What are your visions for the future?

I would say that we want to gradually rank among the top 10 innovation centers in Central Europe. At the same time, we want to be a catalyst for the development of the knowledge economy. This means initiating the creation and development of new economic activities. Also, to influence the local discussion on global societal challenges and possibilities of their solution through innovation. At the same time, we want to actively connect companies with public organizations (especially in the field of education and research), thus constantly bringing new forms of cooperation and new sources of mutual inspiration to the ecosystem.

Thanks to covid-19, companies are more open to making radical changes

The current period brings a lot of changes. The covid-19 pandemic, rising prices of electricity, gas, and oil, and the Ukrainian crisis. Do you feel that business is more adventurous than before?

Since the onset of covid-19, the outlook of many entrepreneurs on many things has changed rapidly. There is a change in the perception of risks and the willingness to take them or ways of planning and working with the future. The number of entrepreneurs who say it makes no sense to plan or plan completely differently and with a different time horizon is increasing. The approach to evaluating investments and their return has changed. An improvement is that companies are more open to implementing radical changes and significantly altering what they are used to. The percentage of entrepreneurs thinking about doing things completely differently rather than just innovating in continuity has increased. But I also know cases where this unpredictability has paralyzed people.

What trends determine the direction of the current economy and will be decisive for regional development in the future?

I think the biggest challenge is decarbonizing the economy, or the need to maintain economic growth within the environmental limits of the planet. Since the first industrial revolution, it has been generating increasing environmental burdens. If we continue to consider change unnecessary and expensive, as many economists still do, we will not find an efficient way to link economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. These needs do not have to be contradictory. Finding technological solutions that would allow this, however, is not sufficiently appreciated. Another area undergoing many changes is human health. A rich society is aging, and with life expectancy increasing, the demand for health services is growing. Adequate care requires constantly new technologies, which are becoming increasingly expensive. If we demand that everyone receive roughly the same care, we place extreme financial demands on public budgets. The world is moving more towards active prevention, which results in less treatment. Enormous amounts of venture capital are flowing globally into this area, but we have a very underfunded system here, and economic and innovation policies overlook this well of business opportunities. What will gradually change and create new opportunities in the world is a shared view of how to perceive and maintain one’s health along with how environmental externalities will become an integral part of the economy.

What would you like to focus more on at MSIC?

We see it as a challenge to involve companies more in financing the development of the innovation ecosystem in the Moravian-Silesian region, including the development of the local venture capital market. This works much better in Israel or the United States. I believe that companies are the key driver of innovation, and it is about starting to trust public sector and universities. Trust is a terribly important social capital that is generally lacking in the post-communist space. Although its effect is not immediately visible, it is with us every day and influences all human behavior. Some decisions simply do not happen because of it. Instead of going into billion-dollar projects with the public sector or investing in a shared laboratory at a university, companies say, “Look, I pay taxes, so let the municipality do it.” You know it from relationships. Where there is trust, you go on vacation together, then buy a house together. Where there isn’t, you don’t. It’s the same in business and the innovation ecosystem.

Can it be changed at all?

Not by tomorrow, not by next year. But the role of MSIC is to find ways, initiate changes, and find, in the perspective of two to three electoral terms and beyond, the mechanism of the snowball.