A new report on Slovakia’s growing innovation ecosystem will be launched during FutureNow Conference & Startup Awards competition in Bratislava this Friday. The report, prepared by EIT Digital and innovation partner Neulogy will feature Slovakia’s Top 15 scaleup companies that have outgrown the shoes of startups and grow at extraordinary rates.
The report highlights some of the most positive changes in the Slovak innovation ecosystem over the past decade. The country moved from being a place where the term ‘startup’ was virtually unknown to a vibrant ecosystem. Success stories of Slovak companies scaling their business internationally and generating extraordinary growth rates are no longer a rarity.
Earlier in 2017, the Slovak Alliance for Innovation Economy (SAPIE) put together the first-ever study on Slovak scaleups. The report by EIT Digital and Neulogy elaborates on the findings in their report and expand the knowledge about emerging Slovak scaleup companies that grow by more than 20% annually. With this in mind, Neulogy also joined forces with SAPIE in the production of this new scaleup report titled “Slovak Challengers 2017: Report on Slovakia’s top scaleups and its growing innovation ecosystem”.
The report identifies the Top 15 Slovak scaleups that have outgrown the stage of ‘emerging startups’ and entered a ‘scaling-up phase’. When interviewing the fifteen companies, Neulogy focused specifically on themes like the value created by these scaleups, their scaleup mechanisms, funding processes and internal R&D activities. The report also encloses an annex of company profiles where readers can find out more about individual companies on the list.
Shedding light on the achievements of the top scaleups can motivate other Slovak innovators to envisage the possibility of success both home and abroad. In turn, higher visibility for the best Slovak scaleups fosters the country’s reputation and position within the greater European innovation ecosystem.
This report gives a precious insight of the Slovak scaleups scene to an audience of stakeholders active in innovation and entrepreneurship-related activities, wishing to understand the Slovak innovation landscape better. The insights generated by this study can potentially inform policymakers, investors and other active stakeholders in the formulation of their targeted agendas that could help create more scaleups and support the existing ones.
The launch will feature Neulogy’s CEO Peter Kolesar, Thomas Kosters who leads EIT Digital’s International Outreach program, SAPIE’s Executive Manager Adela Zabrazna and the author of the report Jaroslav Leitmann.
Key insights:
- The Top 15 Slovak scaleups generated revenues of over 23million € in 2016 in Slovakia
- One third of these top scaleups already sell in foreign markets
- 4 of these companies raised more than 5 million €
- 14 out of 15 companies continuously conduct R&D activities
