The business mission of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance to Prague for the Smart City Forum, 24-28 April, was successfully completed.
We are starting to publish the feedback from the delegation members, and the first feedback is from the Head of the UCA Alex Yurchak.
Main results of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance business mission to Prague on 24-28 April. The mission went according to plan and despite serious difficulties with the departure of the men who dominated the Ukrainian delegation.
Main results of the exchange during the business mission to Prague at the Smart City Forum
The information received about the Czech Republic’s best practices has significantly influenced our understanding of “where we are” and “where we need to go” in the Smart City segment. The result will be a special Position paper prepared by the UCA and a series of presentations on best practices for our audience.
Business contacts with 30+ Czech partners have been established, and our firms will develop cooperation at the B2B level.
Projects and development plans are planned to continue at least with 5 ecosystem partners – these are specific development projects in Ukraine.
Proposals have been prepared for the visit of the Czech President to Dnipro this week, they are consolidated both at the level of Ukrainian clusters and 6 Czech partners.
Our relations with key partners from the Czech side, whom we have known since last year, have been strengthened – CzechInno, Czech Smart.City cluster, EEN-Czech. Many thanks to the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Czech Embassy in Ukraine, which provided maximum assistance and were with us every day. We have met and are entering into a constructive dialogue with new partners – the Ukrainian Embassy in Prague, the Czech Technical University, the Czech Institute of Informatics, Cybernetics and Robotics, the Prague Technology Centre, and many individual private companies.
The Ukrainian delegation was very well represented and looked strong in its composition. This success is due to the systematic work carried out by our Resource Centres, in particular, in this trip – the Smart.City RC (headed by Anatolii Dolynnyi). That is, we went to this event with a number of projects that had already been prepared earlier (in Kosice), with the best experts, and all this made a strong impression on our Czech colleagues. That is why we are able to quickly reach the required level of trust, reach agreements and then go on to implement specific joint projects.
These cooperation projects are the contribution of UCA clusters to the development of smart territories and cities in Ukraine. In an environment where these quality projects are sorely lacking at all levels (everyone says so), the clusters mobilise the best business representatives and experts, organise group work, quickly engage foreign partners, find funding, and thus can help municipalities and ATCs to prepare project portfolios needed for the Recovery much faster. This point is important for all participants in the Smart.City segment to understand, first and foremost, representatives of cities and ATCs, but also representatives of the government and international organisations. Clusters are a catalyst and a powerful tool for innovative development of the economy, cities and territories, as well as a tool for counteracting crisis situations (more about the role of clusters here).
It is also clear that such trips of the UCA strengthen and expand our own ecosystems by industry, and where the UCA and our Resource Centres prove to be leaders and ecosystem coordinators at the national level. Therefore, please join this work in our clusters.
This was the 1st visit within the programme of 3 business missions of the UCA with Czech business partners. The main organiser is CzechInno, and the entire programme is supported and funded by the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade. The next visit will focus on Smart.Industry and will take place in October. The third forum will be on Cyber Security in December. We will move in the same systematic, strategic and coordinated way.
You can watch a short video review on Youtube
- RESIST FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES & MATCHMAKING EVENT for SMEs in the Mobility, Transport and Automotive ecosystem
- EU LIFE Info Days 2023 – EU’s funding instrument for the environment and climate action
- Innovate Ukraine Energy Partnership – Competition Information and Virtual Brokerage
- CEE Expo & B2B Forum: For Sustainable and Smart Urban Development
- Manufacturing industry goes digital: Hack4reSTART Bucharest | Romania
