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Innovation is not technology but a state of mind

The Festival of Czech Innovation 2013 provided a good atmosphere and practical tips and tricks!

On Wednesday 27 February 2013, the building of the National Technical Library in Dejvice did not belong only to knowledge-hungry students. It was, in fact, occupied by five hundred guests of the Festival of Czech Innovation – that is people, who understand that the individual, the team and the whole of society should constantly strive to move ahead. They understand that there is still a lot to improve and that it is they, who are the guarantors that knowledge in the Czech Republic will not be fossilized by their already-achieved results.

The second year of the festival was organised by the public service organisation Czech Innovation together with the leading Czech producer of professional events Blue Events as the climax to an entire year of effort and was not only an exhibition of local innovative ideas from all manner of fields and the culmination of the competition which the organisation organises. First and foremost, it offered a wealth of tips and tricks about how to turn these ideas into success.

No more bad news, or how innovations are not for lone riders anymore

This year, individuals, research teams, entrepreneurs and even government departments registered for the Czech Innovation Competition 2012 with a record one hundred and ten projects - from minor "improvers" for everyday life to highly sophisticated innovative technologies. This fact alone is great news for those who do not like falling into the general feelings of disillusion and apathy that are so omnipresent in today's world. "One to seventeen, that is the ratio of good to bad news stories, that we are all engulfed by", admitted David Vrba, General Director of 3M Czech and chairman of the Board of Directors of Czech Innovation, pointing out this sad fact about our present time, in his introduction to the festival programme. One of the objectives of this year's Festival was to break the back of this overriding bad mood, at least in the field of innovations and to inspire and convince people with an idea to keep working at it.
"In the Czech Republic we live in a vicious cycle – we have great ideas but are poor in bringing them to market", describes the weaknesses of local innovators Karel Havlíček, General Director of SINDAT and Chairman of the Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Craft of the Czech Republic, who came to the Festival directly from the largest meeting of innovators in the world that was held in Moscow. One of the most important things that Czechs must understand for their ideas to grow, is according to him, the need for mutual cooperation. "You won't get any innovation up and running as a one-man or one-woman show," he summarised pertinently. Havlíček also noted the crux of the paradigm shift that has taken place in the 21st century over to the preceding century. "The priority is no longer the transfer of finances, but the transfer of knowledge. The centre of gravity has shifted from Wall Street to Silicon Valley", he added.
The fact that the will to improve is not foreign even to the financial sector was confirmed by Jan Lamser, member of the Board at ČSOB, responsible for the Era brand. "The call for innovations is strong and banks are starting to understand that they are important and necessary. And that is my bit of good news for today – they are starting to take innovation seriously", stated Lamser. Likewise, he brought attention to the importance of language in the creation of a creative environment – banking and corporate slang in general does not bode well for creativity.

Three pillars of success: belief in an idea, feedback and a motivated team

During the course of the programme visitors of the Festival could draw inspiration for the implementation of their idea from business stories about successful managers from various fields. Miroslav Hofman, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors at 2N Telekomunikace, clearly demonstrated in his presentation how a garage-based company making mixing consoles in Michle, Prague can become a renowned electronic equipment manufacturer. In the footsteps of Tomáš Baťa and his famous shoe suitcase, he too brought his first product with him so that he could show it to us. "Baťa used to say: you have to love your product. Innovations are not technology but a state of mind – when you have no imagination or dream, nothing can happen", described Hofman his life's credo. "Entrepreneurship is a creative activity. I would be more than satisfied if today somebody decided to start a new Google, which has a larger turnover than our entire GDP, and we would have helped ourselves more than by electing a new president", he added with salient reference to the current social topic of conversation, one of the most charismatic speakers at the Festival.
The concept that the basis of success is the belief in one's own idea, ultimately was repeated several times during the day. "One must be in harmony with one's idea, otherwise one cannot sell it to others", said for example Petr Rokůsek, founder and owner of Nano Energies, in his presentation during the morning panel discussion under the title Living Innovation. The belief in an idea, one's own abilities and in one's product is evidently not only an empty cliché but the real pillar necessary for starting a business or a career.
Perceptive guests of the Festival could not have missed that the presenters agreed on yet another of the two critical pillars, that according to them, are a guarantee of success. Apart from the belief in an idea they also stressed the importance of motivating co-workers and the need for feedback. Which is important especially when starting out. "The key person is the one next to you - it doesn't matter whether it is a friend at the pub or someone from your family. An idea simply must be articulated into words. The sooner you get the innovation out of you, the better. If you receive positive feedback then you just start", shared his experience from the start of his career Tomáš Formánek from Logio.
This then smoothly ties into the third pillar, which is the selection and motivation of co-workers. "When you have quality people, success is unavoidable", said with a smile HR Manager at 2N Monika Rousová. According to Tomáš Formánek it is then also important to build enthusiasm for a common goal. "Motivation is not money but the opportunity to work on something big, someone touches upon something and you then share the journey with them. Every entrepreneur should be an architect of the future – offer employees a vision, make them into internal entrepreneurs, allow them to grow beyond themselves", he shared his view.
Also Petr Rokůsek shed light on his original strategy of how to motivate employees with the visitors. "It is important to awaken the artist inside of people, they will get enormous energy and then there is no way back, a new direction has been set", he declared.
Another key to success, according to Jiří Dostal, an executive at Innova Medical, is not to succumb to the illusion that the idea will make you immensely rich. "Give yourself the luxury of zero percent expectation, in every company there is always space for putting money into ideas that make sense as well as those that don't", Dostal shared his view.

From steak to nanotechnologies

The fact that innovation is possible in every field was confirmed by the wide array of speakers from various spheres of business. The state of innovation in gastronomy was explained to the visitors by the most renowned Czech master chef and holder of the Michelin Star, Roman Paulus from the Radison Blue Alcron Hotel. As the boss in a kitchen, he has one significant advantage over entrepreneurs in other areas - when people are not satisfied with a new dish, he finds out straight away. "Our work is easy because we receive instantaneous feedback about our meals. So it is very rare for us to put something in place that doesn't work", Paulus remarked happily. His success is based not only on inventing new dishes but also on developing new procedures of how to make "old" dishes better. "Innovation means coming full circle to the beginning. In gastronomy we continuously innovated until, after twenty years, we came back to what we did at the beginning. But now we can put our knowledge and experience into it. The same food now tastes better", added the master chef.
How then do you assert your own solution and stand the test of competition? "It is a great help to be the best in what you do – it is an important competitive advantage", explained Paulus to the listeners with a humour much his own.
According to the speakers it is also important to realise that inspiration for ideas lurks everywhere. "Innovations will seek you out themselves, it doesn't matter where they come from. I actually most enjoy the interdisciplinary nature of innovation – for example a person working in the area of nanotechnologies can be inspired by Mr. Paulus' work in the kitchen", summed up the magic of connecting various field of endeavour Tomáš Formánek.

Last year's winners have something to say

Also the representatives of last year's successful projects in the inaugural year of the Czech Innovation competition had an opportunity to share their experience with the public at the Festival, garnering much praise from the guests present. The organisers actually made the decision to make this new feature into a tradition and so next year's line up of speakers will surely be expanded by this year's top innovators. Last year's absolute winner Miloš Filip from Prefa Kompozity described the Technical Kindergarten project in greater detail to the listeners, a project that he co-authored and which appealed to last year's guest of the Festival the most. "Thanks to our project, children come to understand that there is nothing wrong with working with their hands and if they put their heads into it then that is the best thing of all", described the purpose of the project Filip, who focuses on developing technical knowledge and abilities of pre-school children. He believes that investing in future generations definitely pays off. After all as he himself says: "As the next generation sows, so shall we reap".

And the Festival organisers are also following this motto – which is why they decided to make it possible for a greater number of students to take part in this unique "primer" of innovation tips and tricks. This meant that 120 tertiary students from all over the Czech Republic, selected by their teachers, gained free entry to this inspiration-filled event. In the modern atmosphere of the Nation Technical Library one could see all generations of people intermingling, which further intensified the relaxed and informal character of the entire Festival.

The rich programme and the specific character of the event drew an unexpectedly high number of visitors to the Festival. The organisers managed, at the last moment, to install teleconferencing equipment in the main areas so that more visitors could watch the programme. Nevertheless, unfortunately due to capacity limitations it was necessary to refuse entry to several dozen visitors. It was once again confirmed that there is a great deal of people in the Czech Republic with the will to change things for the better.

From the reactions of the Festival's guests it was also apparent that there is nothing so inspirational as the stories of people who have achieved something in their lives. The presentations of the speakers were very welcome by the listeners, and not only in the main Balling hall, but also in the Gallery, where thanks to teleconferencing equipment, visitors could watch the initial Power panel and the subsequent "Living Innovation" discussions and to directly react to the events in the main hall. The local listeners who didn't fit inside the largest hall in the building were so captivated by the presentation that they forgot that they weren't sitting directly in front of the speakers and spontaneously applauded the presentations on the screen.

Start with the customer and be there in time

According to a visitor survey, the expectations of visitors, who came to the Festival primarily for advice or an impulse for starting their own business, were met namely in the afternoon session of the programme - during parallel workshops attended by twenty of the interesting personalities and innovators. Participants could choose, based on the needs of their projects, whether they listened to tips and tricks from the areas of finance, intellectual property, sales or advice about how to turn their research ideas into reality. For example, from financial experts the visitors could, among other things, find out what one should do, when one has, in their opinion, an exclusive idea, then goes to the bank and comes away empty handed. This section saw many discussions about the new financing options by means of Seed Funds.

Participants in the legal section were interested primarily in how to actually go about protecting their intellectual property and to what extent this protection is provided. "We even discussed the question of how to protect production processes or algorithms", said Jiří Kocík from PwC Legal.

In the next session focusing on sales, Adam Hazdra from the South Moravian Innovation Centre agreed with Kateřina Jiřinová from the University of Economics, Prague that in attempting to launch a product on to the market, the basis of success is a preliminary customer survey. „Start selling even before the product hits the shelves - for you to sell an innovation, you must start much sooner. It is ideal to work with the customer already at the time that you have a concept – a prototype can sell the solution", Jiřinová described the priorities.

The importance of the role of customers' needs and requirements in the creation of an idea was also confirmed by Lenka Novotná, an executive at the designer company Plastia, who recommended that one should inspire one's self by Steve Job's life motto: "Why don't you just simply make things that people need and want?" 

By the way, at the first year of the Festival there was a total absence of female speakers. The organisers resolved to remedy this flaw and to put an end to this men-only era. In the end this objective was successfully implemented with the cast of speakers having four ladies on board.

For the Festival programme not to be too sedentary in nature, the organisers also held one "on-your-feet" creative workshop. So visitors had the opportunity, under the guidance of Petr Šidlo from Direct People, to learn about how to think innovatively, when they tried to draw up case studies for various specific products.

Chatting with your role model

One of the conspicuous innovations of the second year was the so-called Personal Zone, thanks to which visitors could casually talk about various topics face-to-face with more than a dozen personalities from the world of business and innovation. Therefore, students or starting entrepreneurs had the opportunity to get first-hand feedback about their idea from a renowned professional. The most sought-after "Zoner" was Karel Janeček, Chairman of the Supervisory Board at RSJ and founder of the Anticorruption Endowment. However, the debates about business in his cubicle quickly turned into philosophical discussions about the state of today's society. It was more than evident that Czech innovators were interested in social developments. And since the mood in society is crucial for people's innovative thinking, Czech Innovation decided to make place in next year's competition also for ideas in this field and to create a category for project that have a purely social character.

What do innovations and cross-country skiing have in common?

In the Hyde Park of Czech Innovation that was running side-by-side, speakers thought about the character of Czech innovations, their value for the founder and the interconnection between innovations and technological transfers in real life. Also this section saw many inspirational pieces of advice and quotes.
For example, Aleš Pokorný from PwC Czech Republic discussed the importance of the character of the environment for the creation of innovation. "The basis for creating the right innovative environment is to find a corresponding degree of chaos – nothing is created in a sterile environment or in an overly innovative one", explained Pokorný. He also added that innovations are like cross-country skiing – here too it is necessary to stop doing things which are not moving you forward.
Roman Šiser, Director of Czech Innovation, also had a spot in this section. In his opinion, Czech innovations are characterised by a practical, intelligent and ingenious solution. "Undoubtedly there is potential here, however, Czech innovators are missing rhetoric and the entrepreneurial spirit – unfortunately without commercialisation there is no innovation", he summed up his experience with Czech ideas.

At the same time an information fair was prepared for the visitors in the foyer, where partner institutions of Czech Innovation such as for example 3M Czech, Era – a brand belonging to ČSOB, or PwC Czech Republic shared their know-how with the guests of the Festival.

The objective of the whole event was, among other things, to give local innovators the opportunity to make contacts and receive feedback about their work. In the hallways displaying the profiles of all the competing projects, and between the screens presenting the 14 finalists of the competition, many contacts were made. For those that were a little more shy, a networking box was put in place, where visitors could throw their request to be put in contact with a given person from the public list of participants.

And the winners are...

The event-packed full-day programme unerringly headed towards the official climax in the form of the evening announcement of winners of the Czech Innovation 2012 competition, which was held in the non-traditional areas of the atrium of one of the most significant Czech buildings of the past decade, once more moderated by Daniela Písařovicová from Czech Television. "Since last year, we have not only been witness to an increase in the quality of the registered projects but importantly also in the level of their quality, which is very gratifying to see. As far as the scope of the innovations is concerned, the competition didn't see only technical solutions, but progressed in innovations such as, for example, innovative legal applications. It is evident that, be it as it may, innovation is getting under people's skin and that is the main purpose of the activities of Czech Innovation", said Vladimír Mařík, chairman of the competition's expert panel and Head of the Department of Cybernetics at the Czech Technical University in Prague, starting the evening programme. He couldn't resist giving innovators another piece of advice for the coming years.
"If there is one suggestion that I would make to future competition participants, it would be to focus more on making a realistic business plan and on how the innovation can bring a return on investment", added Mařík.
One by one the winners of technological prizes took their place at the podium as well as the winners of all five competition categories. From these, the participants themselves voted for the absolute winner. And it would not have been a festival of innovators if modern technology was missing - the visitors supported their top innovation via an electronic voting system, and all participants could therefore find out the result within a few seconds. The triumph was celebrated by the company Ella-CZ with its project of a Degradable oesophageal stent with a degradable cover, whose director Karel Volenec as a result of a forty-one percent level of support from the voters, headed to the podium for a third time that evening.
"I think that there is incredible potential here and that this competition will increase people's motivation to innovate. I wish all of you who are starting an innovation, development, production and are trying to get it finished, that the environment in which you are present is accepting to these ideas. We have something to be proud of in the Czech Republic and I think that we have something to build upon", were the words of the absolute winner.
 
With this message in mind, the visitors then moved back to the foyer of the library, where over a glass of champagne they listened to a young duo of musicians and continued in building contacts long into the evening hours. The event with the sub-heading the Festival of a pleasant atmosphere was true to its word and mission.

You will find further information about the Czech Innovation Festival at www.festival-cin.cz