In Croatia, 2021 is the 10th anniversary of the start-up entrepreneurship. Following that occasion, Algebra LAB and Netokracija, the leading media-outlet for IT startup entrepreneurship in Croatia, organised the “Rock, Paper, Startups 2021” conference, the highpoint of which was start-up pitching competition.
The conference took place on 20 May 2021 in hybrid form. It was entirely dedicated to high-level discussions on further advancement of the Croatian start-up ecosystem with panel discussions and interesting speakers – successful and experienced entrepreneurs and investors. Before the start-up pitching competition started, Mrs. Maja Brkljacic (Algebra LAB) presented the InnORBIT project to the conference audience.
To familiarize the audience with the project, Brkljacic pointed out that Croatia has a strong ecosystem support for generic start-up development and high number of incubators, accelerators and other business support organisations active throughout the country.
Moreover, Brkljacic emphasized that, according to the researches, space-focused initiatives in Croatia are scarce and primarily focused on academic research with very few and largely unknown SME initiatives. Since in Croatia difficulties in transferring technology from research to market stage are present, Algebra was included in the InnORBIT project to stimulate startup-industry collaboration.
Brkljacic explained the main objectives of the project, with the emphasis on organising effective and sustainable initiatives for supporting space innovation and commercialisation of the space research.
Gathered participants in the audience asked how startup-industry collaboration will be supported and stimulated and which type of organisation will deal with this. Brkljacic answered participants’ questions explaining that InnORBIT project strives to empower innovation intermediaries, such as Algebra LAB, which will thus contribute to organising and running sustainable local initiatives for supporting space innovations.
Gathered participants expressed great interest for project activities and support to the project goal, since many of them can contribute to space innovations with their expertise.
