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Abstract
First, the paper presents the position of the ICT sector in the Czech Republic (CZ) as a transition economy; it pays particular attention to the ICT industry, university studies, research, and development. Then, it focuses on academic-industrial cooperation (AIC) in the CZ. As economic conditions in the CZ are different from the traditional developed economies, the AIC might not necessarily exhibit the same characteristics. Thus, the paper tries to identify potential differences on two concrete cases of two schools (faculties) at two Czech universities. The research is based on interviews with companies and stakeholders from the participating faculties. In comparison with the findings known from the literature on this issue in developed countries, the interviews revealed some differences such as a more positive attitude toward engagement of academicians in private companies and further education at universities. Specific local issues have been discovered such as small volumes of cooperation, not enough flexible researchers, and lacking business orientation at the universities.
Funding
This work was financially supported by the European Union's territorial cooperation programme “European Territorial Co-Operation Austria-Czech Republic 2007–2013” under the EFRE [grant M00171], project “iCom” (Constructive Communication in the Context of ICT).
Notes on contributors
Jan Ministr is the assistant professor at VSB Technical University of Ostrava, Faculty of Economics, Department of Applied Informatics, including the MBA study. He is vice-chairman of Moravian-Silesian section of Czech Society for Systems from 2000. His research interests include: business process modeling, modeling and simulation of real-time systems, object-oriented modeling, software engineering, and he has published many papers in refereed journals, lectures, and monographs in these domains. Some of the papers were published in scientific journals indexed in ISI Web of Science (8) and SCOPUS (3) and his papers were also cited in many conference proceedings in Czech (38) and abroad (18).
Tomáš Pitner received his Ph.D. from Masaryk University in 1998. In 2007, he was nominated the vice-dean at the Faculty of Informatics where he co-established the Association of Industrial Partners (AIP), currently having 27 member companies. Since 2007, he is an external professor and co-supervisor at the Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna in software architectures and web technologies. Recently, he helps to establish the environment fostering new innovative companies and start-ups around the Business IT Club and mentoring young firms, such as Celebrio Software or Takeplace.eu. He has authored several dozens of referred paper, including journal publications.