This morning, we visited the Central Bohemian Innovation Center (abbreviated SIC in Czech, est. 2015). This organization is a resource for start-up businesses in Central Bohemia (the region surrounding Prague), with a focus on start-ups involving R&D. They offer consultations to help people develop their start-ups (from a business and finance or technical validation side), support for commercializing research findings, and connections between professionals and emerging companies seeking specific talent. Some interesting lessons the speaker mentioned are:
1. Start-ups often fail when their engineers focus on impact over profit derived from the product. Actually, both are important for the success of the business.
2. There’s often a gap between academic research and commercialization because they’re on different timelines, lack of appropriate funding, and difference in perspective (the research findings may have vague, broad applications, not just to one product).
I was fascinating that SIC helps start-ups succeed more — and they have the statistics to show for it. It reminds me of the Big Idea Center at Pitt, providing entrepreneurship help to technical students. The speaker encouraged us to pursue local resources to bring our “crazy ideas” to life, to explore their potential.
Swanson School of Engineering 