Young representatives of businesses, banks, universities, academies, institutions of culture and arts, and state organizations met in Prague on 21-22 February to discuss the open and urgent issues of today's world. The main purpose of this years´ event was to establish a tradition of a “board of youth”, which is to continuously help to find realistic solutions to the most urgent problems faced by nations and companies worldwide.
Dignitaries who participated in discussion panels at SEYS 2006 included former Czech President Vaclav Havel, former Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Jiri Dienstbier, the Chief Executive Officer of CEZ, Martin Roman, the Vice President of Microsoft for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Jan Mühlfeit and Member of the European Parliament Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit. Among the personalities who took part in thematic panels where Elisabeth Rasekoala, the Director - African Carribbean Network for S&T, Jürgen R. Grote from Department Politics and Management in University of Konstanz and Tomas Hruda, the CEO of CzechInvest, the Investment and Business Development Agency.
His presentation focused on the strategy of building a knowledge economy in the Czech Republic from two perspectives. One perspective was the support of foreign direct investment and the impact of such support on the economy. The second one was the future of support of SMEs via Structural Funds and CzechInvest´s drive to become a technology agency mediating public and private investment into R&D.