ICONANNUAL

Slovakia
Greetings
H. E. Mr. Juraj Macháč
Ambassador of the Republic of Slovakia to Austria
Dear Readers!
It‘s an honor to address you in iconannual magazine,
issued to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the
European Business and Investment Forum in Vienna.
This year is interesting as it marks the east- west meeting
on innovation and the Smart Cities and Slovakia has the
honor to be its main guest.
Whether we take innovation as a complex assembly
of ingenuity from implementation, inventing new
products, services, processes and technologies to putting
them into practice, it is always a creative process that
combines existing things in a new way in order to offer
the market something unique. The iconvienna fair
itself has the characteristics of being unique. Vienna
is the intersection of business activities in Eastern and
Western Europe, the established headquarters of many
international companies and international organizations
and it is therefore only logical that representatives from
the world of business, energy, politics and diplomacy
meet again in the Austrian capital.
Via this address, I would like to thank the organizers of
the event. As a representative of the Slovak Republic, I
welcome the opportunity to participate in its preparation.
Under the slogan „Warum in die Ferne schweifen, wenn
das Gute liegt so nah (Why wander so far when the good
lies this close)“ we want to introduce an innovative and
creative Slovakia to the neighboring Austria.
I am particularly pleased that so many Slovak leaders,
government representatives, local officials, academics
and interesting companies from Slovakia participate in
iconvienna 2014.
The motto of the event is „Make Contacts to Contracts“
which is characteristic of today‘s world - for example in
the case of Smart Cities I would like to point out the effort
to harness the potential closeness of the two major cities
of Austria and Slovakia, where good contacts already
exist – as we are only 60 kilometers apart - but need to be
translated into business contracts. The Slovak Embassy
in Vienna is active in this regard, particularly in terms
of facilitating contacts for Slovak businesses in Austria,
as well as in pushing the development of the transport
infrastructure needed for better synergy between the two
cities of our region.
It is good that iconvienna 2014 also includes a dialogue of
young entrepreneurs and managers, because this is what
the European Union, which is currently struggling with
high unemployment of young people, urgently needs.
iconannual - The European Business and Investment Magazine
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