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Promoting open innovation

between students from CTU, from Technion and Companies (October 2022 – January 2023)

Project CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/16_014/0000650 „Supporting expert capacity for effective technology transfer at CTU“ is co‑financed by European Union.

Program

What is the Czech Israel Partnership Accelerator

The Czech Israel Partnership Accelerator is a unique program that promotes open innovation via creation of tailored solutions for unique challenges arriving from real companies.

Corporate Partners from Prague and Israel propose CIPA’s multicultural teams innovation challenges relevant to their business, in fields such as:

Sustainability

How does it work?

Entrepreneurs and young professionals from Prague and Israel form international teams, and engage in a 2-month program composed of a kick-off workshop, a virtual acceleration phase, a final workshop presentation to the companies.
Teams are guided throughout the program by highly skilled mentors to create tailored solutions for the proposed challenges.

Part I. Workshop Prague (October 17th to October 20th 2022)
An intensive training week in Prague, held by the Czech Technical University in Prague, devoted to guiding the newly formed teams in the process to open innovation while addressing specific challenges of the participating companies.

Part II. Virtual Acceleration Phase (8 weeks)
Development of a tailored solution for the proposed company challenge supported by virtual mentoring and online collaboration tools.

Part III. Workshop Israel (January 2023)
Intensive 2-3 days workshop, held at the Institute Technion led by Tech7 in Haifa, Israel, followed by final presentation of the results.

Future Prospects

Incorporate the tailored solution to the company‘s product/service portfolio.
Partner with the team by e.g. becoming first customer for the solution or Seed-investing a potential startup. In either case the newly formed startup can also be incubated at SCE or to receive further support during its implementation and initial growth phases.

Participants

What Benefits do you get?

Obtain real experience in entrepreneurship while developing solutions with real business feasibility
A unique opportunity to acquire business experience working with innovative medium sized and large companies
Creating personal and business relationships
Challenging and interesting work with international teams
Possibility of receiving personal recommendations by appreciated mentors and company professionals

Program requirements

Entrepreneurial mindset
Team players
Availability during workshops and virtual phase
Fluency in English
Commitment to the program

Advantages

Project management skills
Team leaders
Professional experience
Experience with multicultural work
Working in corporate environment
Command of Hebrew / English

FAQ

What will we do in CIPA?

In general, in the kick off workshop you will form an international team of four or five people, composed of Israelis and Czechs. Each team will be working on a challenge on of our company partners. A mentor from the company will be your go-to person for questions and guidance, and a CIPA coach will be assigned for each team to help you along the way.
You will be required to develop an innovative solution to the company’s challenge, research, offer solutions, achieve progress, and present deliverables on every milestone until the final presentation to the company.

Why should I apply for the accelerator?

CIPA offers you a unique opportunity to experience first hand what it’s like working in open innovation processes by offering innovative solutions to leading companies and businesses.
You will get a rare chance to experience how it’s like to work with people from a different culture, receive mentoring from professional, experienced mentors, and enlarge your network (professional and personal).

Who can participate in the program?

The program is meant for participants who are university students or up to five years after their last degree and already working. Just take into consideration that first part one of the program includes a full-time five-days’ workshop that will take place in Prague from March 4th to March 8th, a virtual phase afterwards where you will work on the project up to ten hours a week and a final workshop in Israel.

How much time do I need to invest?

The answer is divided into three parts according two the three phases of the program:
Part I is a mandatory fun and intensive workshop which will take place in Prague, organized by the Czech Technical University in Prague.
After that comes Part II which is a 8-week virtual phase. During that time we estimate that you will spend around 6 to 10 hours per week working on your team challenge.
Part III will happen in January 2023 and is a two to three day workshop in Israel.

How much does it cost and what is included?

There is a fee to pay for the program, to show us you’re serious.

What will you receive?

Obtain real experience in entrepreneurship while developing solutions with real business feasibility
A unique opportunity to acquire business experience working with innovative medium sized and large companies
Creating personal and business relationships
Challenging and interesting work with international teams
Possibility of receiving personal recommendations by appreciated mentors and company professionals
Five day workshop including accommodation and lunch in Prague, mentors, two day workshop in Israel, also including accommodation and lunch. Flights are also covered.

Who will be the corporate partners?

The companies participating will be published here soon.

What are the timelines for applying?

Applications for are already open and coming in. The process and timeline differs slightly for applicants from Israel and Czech Republic.

Companies

The partnership was provided by the following companies:

CzechInvest: Investment and Business Development Agency
Via FAOC s.r.o.
Resilient a.s.

We are still looking for new companies interested in participating. Join us.

Benefits for participating companies:

Outsourcing innovative tailor-made solutions
Entrepreneurs and young professionals from Prague and Israel solve innovation challenges of Israeli and Czech companies
Accompanied by highly experienced business mentors and start up specialists from both Israel and Czech Republic

Benefitting from insights into and contacts to the Israeli eco-system
Scouting opportunities for innovative and professional employees
Becoming part of the CIPA company network
Unique multicultural accelerator program
Cooperation between leading Entrepreneurship Centres in Prague and Israel

Mentors

Jan Urban

World of startups and new technologies is Jan’s domain. He founded, sold, and even closed couple of companies himself. For the past twelve years, he has been investing in startups as an angel investor. Jan started his career as a lawyer in White & Case and subsequently as a management consultant in McKinsey & Co. before starting his first company in 2000. Jan studied finance (MA) at the Prague University of Economics and law at the Charles University Faculty of Law in Prague (JD, PhD) and at Harvard Law School in the USA (LL.M.). He is an attorney in the Czech Republic and the USA (the state of New York). He serves as a mentor in several Czech start-up incubators.

Petr Kopeček

Petr is a senior startup specialist at CzechInvest, where he leads an international startup acceleration programs. He is involved in Czech and global startup ecosystem with interest in EU Startup Nations Standard and global trends. Petr is also active in business incubator of his alma mater – Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, where he helps with mentoring, connections, podcasts and international projects. He was co-founder of medical app for blood donors, which unfortunately closed. Except startups and business, Petr is interested in politics, international affairs, ecology, tech, science, reading and he is a fan of Liverpool FC and pickled Camembert, which is a Czech food specialty.

Beáta Vörösová

The last 3 years I was leading the biggest global acceleration program in Czech Republic, counting 240+ tech startups, incl. heathcare state of the art solutions. My role was to create and iterate the program, with local-global and public/private sector stakeholder governance as well. With our 14 member team we were helping to identify and matching the needs, funding the business development services, and creating acceleration programs in the USA, UK and Asia. Currently working on my second degree in healthcare management and innovation, digging deeper into change management and BigData governance. The data-driven possibilities of healthcare is simply fascinating for me, the topic is deep, wide, technical, social and personally meaningful. I hope to continue exploring, how our future looks like.
My expertise I could share with you if you are a tech startup (idea to growth stage): business model, stakeholders and customer engagement, team management, leadership, contacts.

Efi Ben Artzy

For the last 20 years, Efi has been working both as a manager and as a consultant in various companies in Israel, Europe, and the US. Efi has a diverse background in companies’ excellence in various industries (Manufacturing, Services, High-tech, Healthcare, Startups, Etc..). He has been leading operational and business transformations to improve companies’ value to customers; Improving customer experience and success by implementing top-notch processes and better products. Efi is improving complex global operations and developing leaders and managers to achieve business growth, better product development, and innovation. Among others, Efi is a mentor at Google for Startups, and working with fintech, HR, marketing, gaming, impact, AI, and services startups to achieve innovation and better product development. As an entrepreneur, he also established 3 companies of his own.

Project partners