The First Question Is No Longer Just About Profit

The extreme pressure on technological development and innovation is motivating a number of companies to invest substantial financial resources in various sectors. Unlike the past decade, investment groups are now focusing not only on profit but also on sustainability and, most importantly, social responsibility. "This intertwines with the entire philosophy of the company. It has to make sense to us and to the people who will be working on the project," says Jan Balatka, the technology chief of the investment group Behind Inventions, adding that the time is coming when states will have to set boundaries for technologies like artificial intelligence.

Before you decide that a particular project is the right one to invest time, energy, and money in – what exactly do you assess? What criteria do you have?

"Of course, it depends on the stage of the project. Whether it's an existing software service that already has its own customers, or if it's just at the beginning. It's much harder to validate whether it will attract a sufficient number of customers, whether there will be interest in it. If the project is already running, we ask ourselves how much potential it has."

Who most often comes up with innovative ideas? Is it young people?

"It's true that we expected these ideas more from the academic sphere and from people who have finished their studies and want to try something new. But several ideas also came from innovators who, like us, came from a corporation and wanted to try something different after they had already established their careers."

Is this a trend of the times? Are people no longer afraid to take risks?

"Many small entrepreneurs operate on LinkedIn or Instagram, where they generate their own content. In the past, this meant publishing or opening a brick-and-mortar store, both of which are incredibly costly. Now, all you need is a mobile phone and courage. So, in my opinion, the barriers to entering the market are decreasing. Moreover, it's easier to try something new while still keeping your job. I would say that people are not less risk-averse, but they have more opportunities."

How has the startup market changed in recent years?

"I would say that the whole sector is becoming more professional. Large companies and corporations are seeking out startups and accelerators themselves. It's a much faster route for them than doing it internally. They are too robust for this type of innovation. They quickly understood that this type of investment could mean a competitive advantage for them. From this perspective, the startup environment has definitely improved. The startups themselves can draw from the examples of their super-successful predecessors. Moreover, it's now much better described what has proven successful and what hasn't. There are also various accelerators for these emerging entrepreneurs to help them navigate the market or introduce them to clients."

Behind Inventions claims that besides profit, social responsibility is also fundamental for you. How do you get involved in practice?

"The simplest way is the selection of the project itself. This means that we won't choose a project like 'new ways of mining,' but rather projects that would address new energy-saving technologies, for instance. This then permeates the entire philosophy of the company. It has to make sense to us and to the people who will work on the project. Today, young people coming out of schools ask, 'What is this project about?' Their first question is usually not about how much money can be made or how fast it grows. This has changed for the better."

Speaking of young people – on the Behind Inventions website, you mention wanting to help reshape the Czech educational system. So, how should the Czech education system look to foster future innovators?

"We've all gone through the old system, of course. Another thing is that through postgraduate education and various courses, we see how it can work differently and what could be transferable to regular education."

What should that look like in practice?

"Solving complex projects and tasks that go beyond a single subject. Everything is divided here, we go deep into the subject matter, which of course is not wrong, but real life is more about the synthesis of several subjects. This multidisciplinarity unfortunately often appears only at universities, in better cases at high schools as part of some project. Of course, I'm not an educator, and education focused on factual aspects has its merits, it's good for training cognitive skills, but real life is more about emotional intelligence, the ability to respect, to be tolerant, to look at things from a different perspective, and to be successful in a team – not just about writing the best test on dates."

Behind Inventions is currently also behind the project Semantic Visions. The company analyzes up to 90 percent of the global media content in twelve languages. Your task is both the strategic development of the product and also getting the system to more customers. Who are they?

"The company used to focus a lot on technology customers, large software companies, and of course, public sector customers. We are now working on a transformation so that it can quickly serve end customers from the commercial sector, such as insurance companies, banks, or investment funds. So, at this point, it's a lot about transforming the product so that it's consumable for these customers as well."

How can it help in the fight against disinformation?

"Essentially, it's one of the services. The system is able to detect the type of information. If you imagine information that describes some events, it usually relates to a company, a person, or a location. And then there's the so-called event that the information carries. Let me give you an example: the war in Ukraine – the event is war, the location is Ukraine. In the simplest view, the event tells us 'this is happening, or this is not happening,' and we see that there are discrepancies among different news sources. Additionally, since we classify sources, i.e., describe which are more trustworthy than others, we can detect whether and to what extent it's disinformation."

Given the current world situation, there's also increasing pressure for the development of innovative solutions. After all, AI and the interest it has sparked in recent months are proof of that. Will this societal pressure continue to intensify?

"Especially in the use of artificial intelligence, we are still at the beginning. Over the past ten years or so, we have all witnessed a great boom in this area. But what's missing is a certain interconnectedness with things that weren't and couldn't have been anticipated before. At the beginning of each model, its performance, accuracy, and yield are discussed, but not the secondary impacts – that the model might have an ethical dimension or might lean towards something that is not socially acceptable. And then it's necessary to supplement or change the conditions or style of learning in the model. However, all this is usually discovered only during operation. And this is related to regulation, which is not prepared for it and which arises only after the first models are on the market."

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