Jana Kapounova
Business and Investment Development Agency CzechInvest
Stepanska 15
120 00 Prague
Czechia
Introduction
The ESA Business Ambassador Platform in the Czech Republic is operated by Business and Investment Development Agency CzechInvest. CzechInvest plays a key role in the area of supporting business and investments in its comprehensive form. The agency’s unique combination of regional, central and international operations ensures the integrity of services and the ability to connect global trends with regional conditions in the Czech Republic.
The agency strengthens the competitiveness of the Czech economy through its support for small and medium-sized enterprises, the country’s business infrastructure and innovation, as well as by attracting to the Czech Republic foreign investments in the areas of manufacturing, business support services and technology centres.
CzechInvest’ s activities:
- Development of Czech technology firms’ potential
- Support for “smart” investments
- Motivation of foreign investors already established in the Czech Republic toward sophisticated complementary investments
- Development and cultivation of the national start-up and spin-off environment
- Assistance for Czech firms when entering foreign markets
- Promotion of the Czech economy, technologies and R&D abroad
- Cultivation of the business and investment environment in all regions of the Czech Republic
- Linking of partners from the business and R&D spheres
- Use of trends in progressive sectors of the global economy
Why promote space applications to the Czech Republic
Space is an area of economic activity with the highest potential for innovation and represents a springboard to drive Czech economy’s competitiveness. Space activities are generally characterised by their high technological content, multi-disciplinarity, complexity, extreme visibility and often high cost. The two most important reasons why investment in space is of strategic importance are of social and economic nature.
BASS supports you in finding the appropriate solution
The purpose of the Ambassador platform in the Czech Republic is to support the Business Applications-Space Solutions (BASS) programme applicants. The Czech Republic systematically searches for new services and applications that could benefit from capabilities of already existing space systems. The programme then implements feasibility studies of the potential new services and demonstration activities, which engage the end-users in preoperational services validation with a prospect of taking over the service when it is mature enough.
The direct support to companies encompasses:
- The dissemination of key information about the programmes and application process and the support to the submission of outline proposals,
- Fostering networking and awareness raising through the organizing workshops and thematic events,
- Leveraging the synergies with the ESA Business Incubation and Technology Transfer Broker programmes.
Role of the ESA Business Ambassador in the Czech Republic
The role of the Ambassador is to support the creation of new activities for ESA Business Application at a national level. The Ambassador could facilitate the engagement of new industrial companies including SMEs into space applications by creating awareness, providing consultation services and mentoring.
ESA Business Ambassador in Czech Republic will help you to
- go through every step of the BASS application process
- get in contact with National Delegation
- find partners and experts to support your application or understand the call and proposal template requirements.
All three platforms ESA BIC, ESA Technology Broker and ESA Ambassador in the Czech Republic closely cooperate and complement each other in order to maximize the use of space technologies.
Do not hesitate to contact us to get your space business off the ground today!