JIC — South Moravian Innovation Centre: A Six-Founder Knowledge-Transfer Hub (Brno)

JIC (Jihomoravské inovační centrum / South Moravian Innovation Centre) is a regional innovation agency in Brno, founded in 2003 by the South Moravian Region, the City of Brno and four local universities (Masaryk University, Brno University of Technology, Mendel University, and the University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences) to move university research and ideas into companies.

To support business incubation, technology transfer and seed investment for companies linked to the founding universities and the wider South Moravian region.

JIC operates three technology incubators (JIC INTECH for ICT, engineering and medical materials; JIC INBIT for biotechnology; and JIC INMEC for advanced materials, opened 2014), a creative hub (KUMST, 2020), an open workshop (FabLab, 2017) and a seed-investment arm (JIC Ventures, 2015). It runs staged support programmes: JIC ENTER for idea validation, JIC MASTER for international-market acceleration, and JIC PLATINN for established SME support.

Per JIC's own 15-year retrospective, the centre has supported more than 300 companies employing nearly 6,500 people, with combined revenues of roughly CZK 30 billion, including the unicorn Kiwi.com. Firms enrolled in JIC PLATINN grew turnover roughly nine times faster than a comparable non-participating company. A separate, independent EBN network profile cites more than 250 technology companies supported historically and over 60 current resident hi-tech companies employing 300 people; the page notes these figures come from different snapshots rather than one audited count.

JIC has operated continuously for 23 years under stable ownership by two public authorities and four universities, and its region received the European Entrepreneurial Region Award in 2024. However, the source page states that implementation detail on cost, timeline, staffing and conditions for success is not yet available for this practice.