10 years of ICUK
Since 2015, we have been helping smart companies grow and find new opportunities for the Ústí nad Labem Region.
For ten years, we have been building the innovation ecosystem of the Ústí nad Labem Region, i.e. a cooperative and inspiring economic environment in which companies, research organizations, municipalities and support organizations benefit from their synergy. The numbers speak for themselves:
ICUK 2015 - 2025
140 +
innovative start-ups supported in a business incubator
9 billion
crowns obtained for the development of the region in projects managed or launched by ICUK
1430+
business entities that were provided with business development consultations
ICUK
99
business cases using the services of the ICUK Platinn program for company acceleration
3000 +
consultations provided to business entities, those interested in doing business and municipalities
362
educational, meeting and popularization events for companies, municipalities...
13 000+
visitors to our events for entrepreneurs, municipalities... (excluding events for schools)
39
schools and institutions involved in the RUR project (from 2023)
48
various formats of events organized at schools
4060 +
supported pupils and students (from 2023)
Birthday wishes
We have been building an innovation ecosystem for 10 years
They were or are in the leadership of ICUK
Prof. Ing. Jiřina Jílková, CSc.
founder and promoter of the establishment of ICUK, vice-rector for science
Ing. Tomáš Siviček, Ph.D.
1st Director of ICUK, 2015-2019
Ing. Martin Mata, MBA, LL.M.
2nd Director of ICUK, since 2019
Highlights - what was successful?
TOP 5
We have become one of the top 5 innovation centers in the Czech Republic.
Our startups are among the top in the country.
2 of 4
winners of the prestigious startup competition of the Czech-Slovak network Ynovate are from ICUK
In 2021, ICUK became part of a network of 12 innovation centers in the Czech Republic and Slovakia called Ynovate. They share a database of top experts and mentors, which they offer to companies as part of individual programs of each center. Once a year, the centers nominate their top startups, which compete at the national level at the Ynovate Fest. Two of the four years so far have been won by a company nominated for ICUK – in 2021, Good Access, in 2024, Morek Analytics.
ICUK certified by the network of top business centers EBN
1 of 5
institutions in the Czech Republic that have received EU BIC certification
In 2023, the Innovation Center of the Ústí nad Labem Region (ICUK) successfully passed the EBN certification process and received membership and authorization to use the brand of this prestigious European network of innovation and business centers EU|BIC for five years. In addition to ICUK, only four other organizations from the Czech Republic belong to the first league of European innovation centers. ICUK thus opened access to world-class education and partnerships for companies from the region. ICUK undergoes an audit every year, and after five years it will have to defend its certification.
The highest contractual research of the time at UJEP - the unmanned car project
200 +
new jobs created thanks to the project
ICUK launched the cooperation of UJEP with Valeo on the development of unmanned vehicle control systems. He quickly recruited more than 150 high school and university students to the Nupharo Tech Park, who participated in annotating videos. He supported the team for three years, helping with promotion and recruitment. In total, he contributed to the creation of up to 200 jobs within three years, thus contributing to the financial benefit for the university in the amount of tens of millions per year. The project is still running, in cooperation with CTU, the Faculty of Transport, and Valeo.
Shared workshops and Digilab laboratories at FSI UJEP
+25 %
the interest in studying fields at FSI UJEP increased by that much
ICUK, in cooperation with the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Applied Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Ústí nad Labem Region, has built shared public laboratories Digilab; they consist of three laboratories: a polytechnic workshop, an electrotechnical laboratory and a 3D printing workshop. In the first year of operation, they were visited by 2,500 people - of which approximately 1,150 were visitors from the public and almost 1,300 were pupils and students from universities, secondary schools and elementary schools. The workshops, which serve to prototyping and popularize technical education, contributed to a more than a quarter increase in interest in studying.
How time passed - ICUK through the eyes
Video
The first and probably only video purely about ICUK or Kovářova mare...
Promotional video for one of the first startup shows Startup Go Grill (2017).
Abeceda leadera, a platform for management education and a speaker at Festup, also started as a startup in our incubator...
This is how we recruited students for the UJEP - Valeo collaboration in the unmanned car development project.
We always came up with new formats - at the Science, Research, Innovation fair (where it probably ends :)) in Brno in 2017, we brought a quick innovation date - speed dating for matching companies and researchers.
Startup Go Grill public presentations of startups – they were an opportunity to have some marketing fun. Probably our first ever video commercial 🙂 The first “avatar” for this format is also worth noting.
The first hackathon in Ústí, 2017. If the city had adopted those applications back then, where would we be today... :-)
Fuckup Night evenings are brought to Ústí by ICUK…
“Director's Fuckup Night” – fuckups of directors of innovation centers of the Ynovate network, bonus recording of the evening from Ústí nad Labem, which took place as part of the Ynovate Camp meeting.
Promo for the second city hackathon, this time in Děčín, in 2018, which we organized on the Cargo Gallery ship. Děčín had Tomáš Kejzlar (current head of the Central Office Data Center) in town, so things were looking better with the applications, but then the elections came... :(
Photo
