Cassovia BIC Ltd. Business and Innovation Center Kosice, Slovak republic

 Address: Florianska 19, 040 01 Kosice, Slovak Republic

Office adress: Strojarenska 11, 040 01 Kosice, Slovak Republic

Telephone: + 421 55/62 52 160  /  Fax: + 421 55/68 54 053

E-Mail: office@bicke.sk  /  URL: www.bicke.sk

About the company

Cassovia Business and Innovation Center (Cassovia BIC) is an institution providing comprehensive counseling services for Eastern Slovak small and medium sized enterprises. Its activities are predominantly aimed at creating favorable business environment for high-tech innovative entrepreneurs. The company is also actively involved in regional development of the Eastern Slovakia.

The company has at present 12 full time employess - a managing director, assistant, junior and senior SME consultants and project managers, project secretary and civil engineers. Most of the staff have university degrees in Economics or Business Administration, they speak English fluently and 2 engineers have a civil education with certificates about supervising. In addition to internal consultants and experts, the company cooperates with about 20 external consultants and experts from various professional fields.

Brief history

1993 - Foundation of the Cassovia BIC, Ltd, 1995 - Establishment of the business - the company goes operational, 2003 - Establishment of the high tech incubator.

Memberships

Member of the European Business Network (EBN), Association for regional development and environment (ARDE), Slovak National Agency for Development of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, Member of HI TECH incubator in Kosice - Corporation of Legal persons, Member of Regional consulting and informational centre (RPIC) in Roznava.

Target groups

  • existing and newly established SMEs
  • municipal companies,
  • public administration entities,
  • non profit organizations working on regional development projects

Activities

  • feasibility study and project analysis for innovative companies,
  • providing a comprehensive mentor programs for existing and newly established small and medium sized enterprises,
  • providing business quarters and offices with necessary back up services for clients within the high-tech incubator,
  • project development and evaluation of market potential,
  • project development and evaluation of market potential,
  • project implementation (regional development),
  • the follow up and control of companies' new activities,
  • organizing educational and training events aimed at developing basic managerial skills and on regional development (e.g. training events on the project management, regional strategic planning etc.),
  • intermediating business partnerships between Slovak and foreign companies,
  • creating partnerships for regional development projects,
Activity planning Presentation of "Cassovia BIC"

Partners

During the company's existence, Cassovia BIC managed to develop good quality international business relations. Along with the expert organizations from Denmark, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain or United Kingdom, it has participated on various international regional development projects (mostly concerning the infrastructure development).

Objectives

Long term objectives:

  • to improve the productive sector of the Eastern Slovakia
  • to reduce regional disparities using extensive economic development.

Short and medium term objectives:

  • to increase the competitiveness of the Eastern Slovak companies by enhancing the business supporting infrastructure
  • to create motivating entrepreneurial environment.

Research and development projects

The company has been actively involved in research and development projects mainly focused on the European Researching area (ERA).

Within the 5th Framework program (5th FP), Cassovia BIC became one of the partners for the project consortium entitled "Business and innovation centers, a leverage instrument to enhance SME participation in FP5" (ETI-BICs).

The project's primary objective was to promote the participation of SMEs within the 5th FP through specifically targeted training events as well as to develop innovative approaches. The project was situated into the regions with already existing innovation centers.

The following events were implemented during the project:

  • 5th FP training event for BIC executives and project assistants,
  • BIC preparation for promotion of the 5th FP and for training events addressing SMEs,
  • 5th FP experience dissemination,
  • promotion of the Community programs and initiatives focusing on research and development, organizing training events for SMEs,
  • providing SMEs with assistance within research and development projects creation and implementation including partner search,
  • support and evaluation of the research and development projects

At present, Cassovia BIC is a partner to the project entitled DETECT-IT (Specific support section - SSA). DETECT-IT stimulates SMEs to join research activities and technology development within the 6th FP, whose primary objecitve is to support and finance research and technological development in Europe.

It also evaluates needs and skills of more than 1,000 European SMEs in the field of science and applied research in order to motivate their participation on the 6th FP.

The project focuses on the following priority areas: Information Society Technologies (IST), Food Safety & Quality, Sustainable Energy & Environment.

It is expected that industrial companies, universities and industrial parks will be invited as partners for all project activities. All European companies with less than 500 employees are allowed to take part on the project. Within the first stage, the DETECT - IT database will be created containing companies clustered according to different operations. Later on, it will be used for creating new partnerships. All companies registered within the same group will benefit from their membership via exploiting new possibilities of cooperation with similarly oriented companies. Registered companies will be able to use to database for further partner search. In the end, final beneficiaries will be not only the IT producers but also IT consumers.