Smart Business Festival CZ 2020/21 summarized the news in smart business and introduced Czech candidates for European centers for digital innovation

Prague, January 27, 2021: Today 4th year of the Smart Business Festival was broadcast online from Prague. It is a Festival of smart and primarily digital business, which, as every year, summarized the news in the strategic support and practice of the Czech journey of Industry 4.0 and the implementation of digital innovations and also offered foreign inspiration for sharing good practices. Twenty speakers in five sections presented news from their organizations and companies, and in one place for the first time, six Czech candidates for European Centers for Digital Innovation (European Digital Innovation Hubs) were introduced in more detail. Through their activities in the coming years, these candidates should make a significant contribution to the digital transformation of Czech and European small and medium-sized enterprises as well as the public sector.

The organizer of the Smart Business Festival CZ is the CzechInno association, which in cooperation with partners – members and cooperating subjects of the Central European Platform for Digital Innovation CEEInno – offered an online broadcast and teleconference show of news to support smart business this year.

At the beginning of the event, the following speakers presented news from their institutions:

• Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade for Management of the Digitization and Innovation Section Petr Očko,
• Government “Mr. IT” – Commissioner for Digitization and IT and Director of the National Agency for Communication and Information Technologies Vladimír Dzurilla
• …and Yves Paindaveine, Director of the Industrial Digitization Management Section of the European Commission.

“We are pleased to have participated in the Smart Business Festival again this year, which has become a traditional event for smart business, digital transformation and innovation. It was a pleasure to present our activities supporting the digital transformation of the economy, in particular the recent news on the European Centers for Digital Innovation. And we also appreciate the timing of the conference for a week, celebrating 100 years since the introduction of the word robot thanks to the introduction of the play R.U.R., “commented Petr Očko, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade for Digitization and Innovation.

The morning expert block summarized the resources and processes needed for the successful digital transformation and recovery of the economy and society after the covid wound. Anna Tůmová from České Radiokomunikace presented news on the Internet of Things and, among other things, new possibilities of IoT roaming in more than 20 countries around the world. Roland Sommer from Industry 4.0 Austria Platform answered questions like “how to get out of the crisis” using digital tools and the Austrian path of digital transformation. Marc Dönges from BVMW – the German Federal Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises – offered insight into the activities of the 4.0 Competence Center in Berlin and the activities of the Mittelstand Digital initiative, which helps German small and medium-sized enterprises in their digital transformation. And Steven Dehlan from Hamburg’s ARIC Center for Artificial Intelligence outlined how they overcome shyness in perceiving methods based on artificial intelligence and working with data in small and medium-sized companies in Germany.

Jan Holoubek (President of the Electrotechnical Association of the Czech Republic and Member of the Board of Directors of the Confederation of Industry and Transport of the Czech Republic for Industry 4.0 and Small and Medium Business) summarized the state of Czech industry 4.0. in practice and drew attention to the opening scissors between naturally digital or already digitized and other traditional companies. His lecture also included a parallel with the 100th anniversary of the introduction of Čapek’s play R.U.R. and the introduction of the term “robot” into the global language and the socio-economic context.

The conclusion of the conference program belonged to the lecture of Prof. Peter Staňek – forecaster at the Institute of Economics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, co-founder of the Equilibrium Institute and also the holder of the title Personality of the Visionaries 2020 project, who presented his visions of the digital economy and society in the post-covid era.

In the afternoon, Smart Business Festival CZ connected with telephones to the First Annual EU EDIH Conference in Luxembourg and presented six newly nominated Czech candidates for European Centers for Digital Innovation (EDIH) in a joint virtual discussion room, whose activities should significantly contribute to the coming years. successful digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises and the public sphere.

They became:

BRAIN FOR INDUSTRY with its registered office in Prague and its primary focus on the field of artificial intelligence, whose managing partner and coordinator is: Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic v.v.i.,

• CYBERSECURITY INNOVATION HUB based in Brno with the main focus on cyber security, whose leader and coordinator is CyberSecurity Hub as a joint institute of three universities – Masaryk University, the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Brno University of Technology,
• DIH NORTHERN AND EASTERN BOHEMIA with its registered office in Liberec and the primary focus on the field of artificial intelligence, whose leading partner and coordinator is the Agency for Regional Development Ltd.,
• EDIH CTU based in Prague with the main focus on the field of artificial intelligence, whose managing partner is the Czech Technical University in Prague,

EDIH DIGIMAT based in Kurim and the main focus on artificial intelligence, whose leader and coordinator is Intemac Solutions, Ltd.,

• EDIH OSTRAVA with its registered office in Ostrava, whose main focus is supercomputing (HPC) and the managing partner and coordinator of the Technical University of Ostrava.

The nominated candidates are now facing the first call from the Digital Europe program, which will be announced in the coming weeks and from which the final composition of the Czech and European EDIHs will emerge. In the Czech Republic, 3 to 6 such new hubs with a European dimension should grow in the coming year, and the development of the national and regional DIH ecosystem and its cooperation with European partners will continue.

A recording of the all-day program in Czech and English is available on the Youtube channel of the CzechInno association.

CzechInno is an interest association of legal entities founded in 2011 to support Czech innovative entrepreneurship, founder and coordinator of the Central European Platform for Digital Innovation CEEInno, co-founder of Hub for Digital Innovation (H4D) I, partner of Cybersecurity Innovation Hub (CIH) and author of a unique innovation support system in The Czech Republic, which consists of an annual organization:

• the Visionaries competition, the aim of which is to reward innovative achievements in Czech business,
• a festival of smart and innovative approach to business called Smart Business Festival,
• a project to promote trade and research cooperation with third countries called the Smart Export Hub, which also includes an annual exhibition of information and contacts for international trade called the Smart Export Forum, and
• a series of regional events, in 2020 called Digital Transformation 2020, designed to promote the use of advanced digital innovations and elements of the so-called Industry 4.0 in companies and ordinary society.

The Smart Business Festival CZ 2020-21 was held under the auspices of the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic and the Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic for Economy Karel Havlíček. The main professional partners are the Czech Export Bank, České radiokomunikace, a.s., the Technology Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic as the coordinator of the Enterprise Europe Network Czech Republic, the Electrotechnical Association of the Czech Republic, the Association of Innovative Entrepreneurship and the Society of Science and Technology Parks. The media partners of the project are Regie Radio Music as the operator of Frekvence 1, Evropa 2 and Rádio BBC radios and the multimedia project Zet, the BusinessInfo portal and the magazine Innovative Business and Technology Transfer and the Year of Digital Business. The technological partner for the translations used in the subtitling of the lectures was Newton Technologies, a.s. and its Beey.io system.

Information on the activities of the CzechInno association and all its projects are available at www.czechinno.cz

Media contact: David Kratochvíl, MBA – Chairman of the Steering Committee of the CzechInno Association
kratochvil@czechinno.cz, 774 220 272