The Czech-German Innovation Festival 2019 took place in Berlin at the beginning of April. The event was organised by the Czech Centre and the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Berlin in cooperation with CzechInvest. The event was attended by more than 140 participants.
The festival was opened by Karel Havlíček, vice-chairman of the Council for Research, Development and Innovation, with a presentation of the Czech Republic’s plans defined by the Innovation Strategy 2019-2030. He was followed by Oliver Wittke, parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, with the Germany Hightech-Strategie 2025. Together with Czech and German partners of the festival, Vice-Chairman Havlíček discussed enhancement of international cooperation in research and development. Support for activities relating to Industry 4.0 in the Czech Republic was also a topic of discussion.
In two panel discussions, participants shared their experience in the area of Czech-German cooperation with stress on the aerospace industry. Current trends in these areas, institutional support for research and development and expansion of start-ups abroad were discussed in four workshops.
On the Czech side, festival participants included representatives of the ESA BIC Prague space incubator, the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, CEITEC, the Czech Technical University, the Technical University of Ostrava, GNSS and the companies AVAST, Frentech Aerospace and Ackee. German participants included representatives of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Berlin Partner for Business and Technology, GTAI, Fraunhofer IPK Berlin and the companies E.ON Agile, and OHB. The IT association Bitkom was a partner of the festival.
The festival also featured Czech Startup Pitch, a competition of seven participating start-ups. The winner of the event was the Suborbitality project, which is developing the first commercial and affordable suborbital rocket and is currently incubating at ESA BIC Prague. The Czech Centre prize was award to the firm myTimi. The audience most highly rated the start-up Parking Maniacs.