Owing to the staff exchange within the DA-SPACE project partners, Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) had a pleasure to host an expert from the Slovak University of Technology (STU) in Bratislava Dr. Marian Zajko, MBA, Associate Professor. On March 22, 2018 Mr. Zajko gave an interactive workshop focused on business models in starting business to the solvers of the CTU Open Innovation Lab.

Mr. Zajko has been working at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava since 2006. Earlier he worked as a university teacher and Head of Dept. of Computer-Aided Information Systems at the Faculty of Management at the School of Economics in Bratislava from 1973 to 1990. After that he was a self-employed business consultant, business consultant in an international consulting company and then as a financial manager in a Slovak-based international company.

At STU he built up new courses - Entrepreneurship in SMEs, Financial Management and Business Informatics and Entrepreneurship - taught at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Faculty of Informatics and IT. With coauthors he published a textbook “Management of SMEs (STU, Bratislava, 2010)”, monograph "Successful Innovations? Efficient Knowledge and Technology Transfer and International Collaboration” (TU Ilmenau, 2016) and „Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurship“ (Knowler, Brno, 2016). Since 2009 he led three national research projects and partnered in three international projects, currently in the DA-SPACE and the SK-HU Crossborder project EYES.

Since the establishment of the STU Institute of Management in 2009 he acted as a Deputy Director for institute development and led the Dept. of Economics and Management in Entrepreneurship. Since 2012 he has been working as a Director of the STU Institute of Management teaching the courses stated above. His main research interests have been Entrepreneurship (SME entrepreneurship, innovation-driven entrepreneurship), Innovation Management, and Entrepreneurial University. In the period 2008 to 2012 he coordinated on behalf of the STU Management events within the Global Entrepreneurship Week in Slovakia and represented Slovakia as a delegate in the Global Entrepreneurship Congress from 2010 until 2012. He is also the chairman of the committee for evaluation of business plans of applicants for the entry to the STU Incubator of Technology.

Workshop: Business Models in Starting Business

 1 Entrepreneurship, business plan

 2 Business model canvas (BMC) vs. Business plan

 3 Design of customer value proposition - approaches

 4 Transition from the Business Model Canvas to Lean Canvas

 5 Selected current business models: Bait and hook, Subscription, Freemium

Reference: Zajko, M. – Mišota, B.: Inovačné podnikanie (Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurship). Knowler - Evropský institut pro výzkum, inovace a vzdělávání, z.s., Brno 2017. ISBN 978-80-905988-3-6. 196 pp.