Cybersecurity is the foundation for digital progress. It gives business leaders the confidence to embrace the shift to the digital economy. It helps governments protect critical state functions and the public services on which we all rely. And it gives all of us the peace of mind to live our digital lives to the fullest, knowing our personal data is secure and private.

Businesses are making their supply chains more sustainable and embedding data and technology into them more than ever before. The added value here is that building supply chain resilience can mitigate risk while improving performance on ESG.

The goal of the transformation process is to create an organisation in which business decisions are based on effective data analysis, and the area of management reporting focuses not so much on providing data, but on signalling opportunities and risks and presenting dynamic scenarios supporting the decision-making process.

Modernising the way we work was a challenge due to the size of the organisation. At the PGE Group, we are aware that digitisation involves a new work culture and the inclusion of all employees in the transformation process.

The Digital Futures Index showed that public sector digitisation plays a catalyst role, improving the resiliency, agility and efficiency of the ‘business of government’, and creating the conditions for broader digital economic growth and greater digital inclusion.

National and regional innovation strategies should recognise innovation centres as key entities in the area of digital transformation. Cooperation between regulators, businesses and hubs is necessary at the stage of creating incentives, programmes and regulations to strengthen the exchange of benefits and lead to reducing the digital gap.

The goal of this project was to increase the quality of business processes of the existing public services and help with planning new customer-friendly services. The state lacked an accurate overview of where, what kind and at what level and quality services the state and local agencies offer and what channels were used in order to provide services.

Poland is a pioneer in the CEE region when it comes to the level of digitisation of public services. The finance sector is no exception, showing that the Polish public administration can effectively build digital solutions that gain widespread popularity in a short time span.

If you want to be in the game long term, first think about employees, skilled employees, well educated employeees, especially knowing that going forward will be relying so much on very advanced technologies and quick changes of business models for many industries and businesses.

It is not just capital and ideas that cross borders, it’s also people. When you walk into a company headquarters there is no longer any expectation that the C-level executives or anyone else will be from that actual country. The beauty of this is that it creates ecosystems which are fluid.

More advanced start-up ecosystems in the West were able to raise more funds and build institutional capacity and expertise that can add value to the CEE deals. Plus, non-CEE deep tech-focused VCs are more open to obvious risks and more extended payback periods.

Strong government and private investment is required more than ever to empower R&D and new commercially successful applications as early as possible.

We're seeing that the green transition is not only an imperative, but also an opportunity within Central and Eastern Europe. In fact, we know that establishing green and low emission production capabilities could add $730 billion to European economies by the year 2070. So it is a big opportunity, but one that many customers are still learning about in this region.

With the background of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inflation, and a sharp correction in the capital markets, there was potential for investor confidence to crumble. The task is to build on momentum, with more attention to early-stage funding and boosting technologies with the highest potential for reducing emissions.

By using AI we were able to first predict what the pollution levels would be in the coming days and then analyse what is driving them in cities. Based on that, we started building a solution that identifies current and predicts future pollution levels.

We are now starting to witness more specialised accelerator programmes and impact funds designed to speed up the maturation of climate tech start-ups in this region. It’s clear that the best days for Central and Eastern Europe remain ahead of us.