AmCham CZ

Jaroslava Rezlerova of Manpower has the hardest role of any AmCham CZ board member. As our Vice-President of People Policy, she is the one who has to answer when every other board member- and almost every other member- asks why the government does not understand that Czechia needs more qualified people today, not in eight months or eighteen years. When I called her a few weeks ago to beg her to continue, she had every right to tell me to find someone else to play pinata. Czechia operates under a paradox in policy. Every single business and every single politician will tell you that the country’s primary economic asset is its educated and efficient workforce. Yet, the country does not have single minister responsible for developing and implementing a people strategy that will ensure that asset grows more valuable in the future. We talk about becoming an innovative economy as if technology just suddenly appears all by itself. It takes teams of the people pursuing the science, developing the technology, figuring out how to produce it efficiently at scale, and then market and distribute it globally. We are fortunate that Jaroslava does not back down from a challenge. Not only did she agree to continue, but she also wants us to convince whatever government comes next that we need a people policy that is not siloed in several different ministries, but co-ordinated by the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic, and driven by performance metrics such as business research investment per capita. Private sector leaders like Jaroslava are the reason why Czechia has risen so fast and so far away from where we were in 1989, and the reason why the country still is the best bet in the region for any investor who wants to put his money on Europe’s next catalyst of innovation. https://lnkd.in/e5m9AiFv

At #AmChamGeneralAssembly held yesterday, Board of Directors was announced to lead AmCham Czech Republic activities in the 2024-2025 term. Congratulations to the AmCham President Milan Slapak RSBC Holding, VP for Technology Ondrej Krajicek Y Soft, VP for People Jaroslava Rezlerova ManpowerGroup Czech Republic, VP for Intel and Strategy Martin Skrehota Carrier and VP for Health Care Vaclav Novotny Aspironix. Congratulations to Board of Directors Hesham Elamroussy ExxonMobil, Pavel Kliment KPMG Czech Republic, Martina Kneiflova #EYCzechRepublic, Violeta Luca Vodafone, Michala Malat Johnson & Johnson, Munir Nanji Citi, Michal Pechoucek Evolution Equity Partners, Jaroslav Skvrna Deloitte CE, Michal Stachník Microsoft, Sanjiv Suri Zátiší Group, Josef Svejda onsemi, and Michal Zavisek Honeywell Technology Solutions. Thank you, Jaroslav Skvrna #DeloitteCzechRepublic for hosting and together with Jan Hejtmánek showing AmCham member company leads the benefits of #AI in business operations. Thank you to Michelle Simmons, Milan Slapak, Michal Pechoucek, and Tomas Szaszi for sharing your insights and discussing the challenges.

My favorite photo (see below) of Milan Slapak, who was re-appointed by his fellow board members as president at AmCham CZ’s General Assembly, is the one below of him addressing an audience of dignitaries in onsemi’s meeting room. Despite having a thousand and one things he had to in his new role leading RSBC Holding, including meetings that would lead to the purchase of STEYR ARMS GmbH , MIlan insisted on driving down the D1 and out into the rolling lands of Moravia to support Josef Svejda (also joining the board) and his team’s efforts to channel development and production of silicon carbide semiconductors into Czechia. He knew the country needed much more development of advanced technology. He also understood how hard securing such investment is, and how aggressively other countries are pursuing the same investment. He had experienced how some decision-makers focused on different objectives- jobs, headquarters, ribbon-cuttings, geopolitical public relations- instead of the hard day-to-day of getting a deal done and implemented. He wanted to do everything he could, and AmCham could, to help Josef win this deal for onsemi, Roznov, and Czechia. When he spoke that day, he put the investment in its proper context, as one of the many Big Bets that we will need to make on each other to build an innovative economy. We will need Ladislav Janíček and Brno University of Technology to bet on onsemi . We will need the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic to bet on onsemi and VUTB to bet on onsemi. We will need thousands of high school and university student to bet on onsemi. We will need leaders of onsemi in the US- such as Catherine Côté and Steven Grasso- to bet that we can deliver the quality engineering and high level management they need to compete in the intense global semiconductor industry. Leadership is pointing a finger in the direction of where we should go, and then moving in that direction. Milan has been moving the country towards innovation for his entire career. AmCham is fortunate to have him at our helm for another year. https://lnkd.in/eet_EyuP

At #AmChamGeneralAssembly held yesterday, Board of Directors was announced to lead AmCham Czech Republic activities in the 2024-2025 term. Congratulations to the AmCham President Milan Slapak RSBC Holding, VP for Technology Ondrej Krajicek Y Soft, VP for People Jaroslava Rezlerova ManpowerGroup Czech Republic, VP for Intel and Strategy Martin Skrehota Carrier and VP for Health Care Vaclav Novotny Aspironix. Congratulations to Board of Directors Hesham Elamroussy ExxonMobil, Pavel Kliment KPMG Czech Republic, Martina Kneiflova #EYCzechRepublic, Violeta Luca Vodafone, Michala Malat Johnson & Johnson, Munir Nanji Citi, Michal Pechoucek Evolution Equity Partners, Jaroslav Skvrna Deloitte CE, Michal Stachník Microsoft, Sanjiv Suri Zátiší Group, Josef Svejda onsemi, and Michal Zavisek Honeywell Technology Solutions. Thank you, Jaroslav Skvrna #DeloitteCzechRepublic for hosting and together with Jan Hejtmánek showing AmCham member company leads the benefits of #AI in business operations. Thank you to Michelle Simmons, Milan Slapak, Michal Pechoucek, and Tomas Szaszi for sharing your insights and discussing the challenges.

The Czech government says it wants an innovative economy. Do stats back them up? AmCham CZ ‘s human resources committee held a hybrid session with Skalková Jana, the chief advisor to Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, to discuss how innovative our workforce has become. Developing innovative people is not the work of one ministry. The education ministry has to retool curriculums and teaching approaches. The immigration ministry has to modify their attitudes to foreign engineers and scientists. The Ministry of Industry has to target advanced technology investment which create interesting work at interesting pay for people with STEM degrees. The Culture Ministry and others have to invest in urban areas that attract creative individuals. So, how are we doing? 58.8% of all researchers employed in Czechia work in the private sector. That is below the EU average. Czechia had 51.7 Bachelor students In STEM per 1000 in 2022, 19 master’s students, and 9.8 doctoral students. Many people say we need more females in STEM. We rank 14th in the EU in female STEM students. We rank 15th in male STEM students. Maybe we should push for both. The number of skilled immigrants has declined from 1 for approximately every 2 unskilled immigrants in 2015 to 1 skilled immigrant for every 3 unskilled immigrant in 2023. Some of that can be attributed to Ukrainian refugees, but this trend has increased every year since 2015. The numbers tell a different story than the multiple national strategies the government has crafted to guide our economy. This is not to point a finger at any one. Many people in government are working hard to turn reality into what policy promises. It is just that individual efforts have not resulted in collective progress. We agreed with Jana to work together to search for why the outcome of policy is diverging so much from its stated intention. Many thanks to AmCham Vice President Jaroslava Rezlerova of ManpowerGroup and Amcham immigration lead Miroslav Mejtský of Petyovský & Partners for leading the session, and to Jaroslav Bělehrad of Y Soft, Filip Franek of Amazon and Filip Svab of AT&T for providing insights and inspiration. Members can receive the 2024 Workforce Report by emailing Katerina Bendikova at kbendikova@amcham.cz.

It is such an honor for me to be reelected member of Executive board of Directors as VP for People. Thank you my wonderfull colleagues from board, Milan Slapak Ondrej Krajicek Jaroslav Skvrna Martina Kneiflova Violeta Luca and many others serving in AmCham CZ We will continue this journey together with AmCham Director Weston Stacey, do our best to help this country and its economy to become more prosperous.

A Big Bet has been made. Today, onsemi announced one of the largest investments in Czechia's history to expand its silicon and silicon carbide development and manufacturing capabilities in Roznov nad Radhostem. When up and running, the new investment will contribute more than CZK 6 billion annually to the country's GDP. What is perhaps more important is that it expands our ability to research and develop semiconductors. It creates an enormous base of advanced technologies that will spur young people to study engineering and computer science, encourage universities to push the boundaries of scientific research in this field, and inspire entrepreneurs to create start-ups in the industry. This is the Country for the Future. This is the Second Economic Transformation. Every businessperson in the country recognizes the enormous effort Josef Svejda, Ales Cab, Michal Lorenc and other executives at onsemi made to bring this investment here. They were the primary champions of the project, and the country, and navigated every difficult corner and every unexpected obstacle to get the investment here. Keep going guys! Jozef Sikela, Ivan Bartoš and others in the government ensured the work of CzechInvest and Office of the Government of the Czech Republic received the political support it needed. Karel Havlíček made it clear that this was a project of national importance. Politics and government worked how it is supposed to work on this project. Ladislav Janíček of Brno University of Technology was also essential. He will be supplying the hundreds of engineers this project needs, and the teams of researchers that will build on this investment. He has been involved since the beginning to drive this decision to a yes. Business leaders like Milan Slapak, Ondrej Krajicek, and Martin Jahn lent their considerable influence to persuading the government that this was a bet we had to take. It does not end here. Josef Svejda joined AmCham CZ's General Assembly this morning as a new board member. Our members will focus on turning this second bet- after GE Aerospace's Catalyst engine project- into a steady pipeline of major investments into the development of advanced and sustainable technologies. Big bet by big bet by big bet is how Czechia will become a leading innovative economy.

Breaking news: “OnSemi will invest over $2b to expand its existing operations in the Czech Republic” I am absolutely thrilled .. ultra high-value R&D and productions heading to the country. Semiconductors represent one of the key drivers of the economy and new technologies such as quantum computing and AI. This is a huge tribute to local management that have developed the existing site tremendously and earned the trust of onsemi leadership team, not mentioning the expertise and brainpower that concentrate in the country as well as research collaboration with local universities. I was lucky to visit 3x OnSemi over the last three years while wearing AmCham CZ hat as part of advocating support of big bets investments within the CZ Gov: whenever was OnSemi opening either a new production line or a new labs. Always thinking ahead. Hats off to Ales Cab , Josef Svejda and others! You guys are awesome! You show the way 👍

This week, in a conference room in Brussels, a decision may be made that will have the same impact, with far less fanfare, as the one about combustion engines.   ENISA, Europe’s cybersecurity agency, is hosting the group of member state agencies (ECCG) to discuss the deadlock over a European cloud certification scheme (#EUCS). They could push a proposal further into the bowels of the Brussels decision-making process.   The architects of`EUCS originally intended to create a set of common technical requirements for companies which want to provide cloud services to governments and critical infrastructure providers. France soon saw an opportunity to use their prowess with the Brussels bureaucracy to manipulate the rules to exclude the primary providers of cloud services in favor of their own companies. This they presented as “digital sovereignty”.   Would Czechia and other European countries benefit from France’s move? It is hard to see how.   Last week, over a thousand software geeks and entrepreneurs gathered in Prague for the Google Summit. Over the course of a day, Google engineers presented the technological advances that constitute its multi-layered cloud platform. That platform contains a vast array of different applications-- including a package of sophisticated technologies to protect government data- that can tailor how each company can utilize the cloud. An astounding amount of talent, technology, and money that goes into delivering the cloud to your laptop. It is not easy to replicate that combination, especially at the scale needed to run a cutting edge and secure cloud platform.   If every country limited its government to work only with domestic suppliers, they would limit the growth- and the security- of the cloud. And countries with fewer resources would have a major disadvantage. Essentially, by pushing for territorial requirements in EUCS, France has asked the rest of Europe to restrict the capability and security of cloud in their country. That is not digital sovereignty, but the path to digital vulnerability.   What is reported to be on the table this week is a potential solution. The most recent proposal stripped out all the requirements not necessary to ensure the security of the technology. This proposal was not supported at the last meeting. It seems as though it will be raised again. Some are confident it will prevail this time.   The National Cyber and Information Security Agency has supported sticking to security. They have one concern. Strictly technical requirements do not allow authorities to exclude malicious actors- especially hostile states- from providing cloud services to governments. Such concerns are valid. Russia will use software, not soldiers, to undermine Czechia. Geopolitical concerns may or may not be best handled by EUCS, but it needs to addressed somewhere in Europe’s cybersecurity regime. American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union (AmCham EU) AmChams in Europe