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Technologická Inkubace

The Czech Republic needs courage for spin-offs. Conditions alone are not the main obstacle

Spin-off
05.12. 2025
line-arrow The Czech Republic needs courage for spin-offs. Conditions alone are not the main obstacle

The Czech academic and research sphere still has neither the courage nor the motivation to establish spin-off companies. If the future prosperity of the Czech Republic is to be based, among other things, on science, research and innovation, it is necessary to systematically support the creation of companies commercialising research results legislatively, financially and culturally. The participants of the second annual National Day of Spin-offs conference, organised by CzechInvest together with the Technical University of Ostrava and the Industrial Property Office, agreed on this.

Although the government and other institutions have been declaring support and adjusting the conditions for the creation of spin-offs for a long time – for example, in the Innovation Strategy of the Czech Republic 2019-2030 – the number of these companies is not increasing substantially. Transfera reports that there are currently 86 spin-offs registered in the Czech Republic, with an average of six new spin-offs every year. According to available international comparisons, this is roughly four times less than in some comparable countries, such as Austria.

As technology development directly affects the economic prosperity of a country, there is a need to motivate academics and researchers to be more active. “Advanced economies today not only develop foreign direct investment, but also systematically support start-ups and spin-offs. That is why we have long been trying to connect the academic and research sphere with the business environment. Spin-offs come up with innovative technologies that can be useful for Czech industry. And in international comparison, there are still few of them being created in our country,” said Jan Michal, Director General of the CzechInvest agency.

This idea is supported by data from the European Spinouts Report 2025, according to which deep-tech and life-science spin-offs emanating from European universities and research institutions have a total value of around €400 billion and have created 167,000 new jobs. Almost 40% of this value is generated by companies founded from 2015 onwards, clearly showing the trend of the past decade. The gap between the Czech Republic and the leaders represented by the UK, the Scandinavian countries or Switzerland is all the more noticeable.

Although we have a number of unique and impressive scientific and research results in the field of technology innovation, the establishment of spin-offs is neither common nor easy in academia. We have only one spin-off so far, and it has been very successful. We have brought in an expert with foreign experience for this purpose. I believe that more spin-off companies will be added as the existing ones prove themselves,” added Igor Ivan, Rector of the Technical University of Ostrava.

Partially positive signals are provided by CzechInvest data. Among the applicants to our Technology Incubation programme, which supports the development of highly innovative start-ups, we have 27% of projects related to universities and research institutions. However, there are still few real spin-offs in which a university or research institute has an ownership stake,” said René Samek, Director of the Investment and Foreign Activities Division.

The real barriers lie in culture and competence rather than legislation

According to the chairwoman of Transfera, Růžena Štemberková, the Czech academic environment is very conservative and still does not distinguish between apparent and real barriers to the creation of spin-offs. Legal analyses show that neither Czech nor European laws fundamentally prevent the establishment of a spin-off, but the process is often more complex and not fully explored. Similarly, the establishment of companies at universities and research institutions is perceived as bureaucratically difficult, but in reality it is the experience and methodology rather than the legal possibility that is lacking. The sceptical attitude of some academics, who see entrepreneurship as a foreign world and thus create a cultural barrier, is very problematic, she said.

On the contrary, the real obstacles are mainly the low entrepreneurial competence of academics and students. There is a lack of knowledge in business development, pitching, fundraising and corporate management. Moreover, spin-offs, like conventional start-ups, face a lack of early-stage funding. The situation could be improved by, for example, dedicated pre-seed and seed funds that would bear the risk for intellectual property protection, prototypes and first market entry. The Scandinavian countries, where special grants and funds for spin-offs, direct salary subsidies or tax breaks for employers of spin-off companies are in place, show what well thought-out financial support can look like.

There are also few examples of good practice in the Czech Republic. That is why the conference gave space to inspiring and successful spin-offs. These include autinno, a company founded at VŠB-TUO, which recently won a prestigious award in the UK for research and development of technologies important for automated driving and advanced driver assistance systems.

“We want students to think about starting a business while they are still studying and know that they are not alone. Our role is not only to educate, but to help them get their ideas to market,” Igor Ivan, Rector of VŠB-TUO, emphasized and reminded that the university has built a comprehensive ecosystem of entrepreneurship support. It offers courses focused on startups and entrepreneurship as well as the university’s Green Light accelerator.

Legislation is not enough, the willingness to support entrepreneurship is decisive

A certain rigidity of academics and researchers is not only the domain of the Czechs. Universities in neighbouring countries are also working to readjust their mindsets. “Academic careers are still evaluated primarily by the number of publications, while patents, licenses and spin-offs stand aside. Each system behaves according to how it is measured. As long as the number of papers is the main weight in university rankings and commercialisation is only third, we cannot expect a major breakthrough.” evaluated Jacek Kasz, Director of the Centre for Technology Transfer at the Technical University of Cracow .

Spin-offs must be the automatic outcome of an effort where years of work in a research team is turned into something that makes people’s lives better in real terms. Our mission is ‘Technology for People’ – technology for people. That means taking innovation to market. The traditional pillars of research and teaching are not enough, we need to have a robust third pillar of commercialisation.” said Birgit Hofreiter, Director of the Innovation Incubation Centre at Vienna University of Technology .

Hope for change in the Czech Republic could be brought by the new Act on Research, Development, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer No. 328/2025 Coll., which will come into force on 1 January 2026.Although the Act allows for the support of knowledge transfer, it does not automatically mean that every institution will be motivated or able to actively support spin-offs. It will depend on the approach of each university and institution as to how it treats procedures for commercialisation and protection of intellectual property internally. The law can create the conditions, but a real transition to business requires more than just a legislative framework.

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