INOVATO won 1. Award for Innovation of the Nitra Region 2019. Is it an encouragement? It certainly does. Is it a commitment? Yeah. Are we doing enough? Certainly not. We launched INOVATO a year ago to take engineering collaboration further towards networking, the sharing economy, education and projects. Some of our projects have been successful, some are still waiting to be implemented.
Lately, I’ve been seeing in companies that a lot of ideas are still in drawers. Either the courage or the resources to implement them are lacking. It’s a pity, because maybe in a month or two someone else will come up with a similar idea and make it happen. In Slovakia we are generally not brave enough. Maybe it has to do with mentality, maybe it’s a result of the development in the last decades. I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. Personally, therefore, I find it a good solution to look for a simple mechanism to support innovation projects that would help cover the resources for the first phases (design sprints, prototype, investment for production start-up). The existing mechanisms are administratively demanding and not very suitable for smaller projects.
Personally, I was therefore interested that the idea of creating a revolving fund to support innovation was included in the innovation strategy of the Nitra Self-Governing Region. The resources in the fund would be gradually renewed and could support more and more good projects. I hope that the political courage will be found and this will be launched as soon as possible. This would make the Nitra region a leader in this approach (which has been working in the world for many years).
And of course, the above mentioned award goes to the entire INOVATO team, all supporters, active network members and participants of our events.
Peter
