16th May
XVI ASPIRE Annual General Meeting
Hosted by the Mayor of Kraków in the Council Chambers of Kraków Town Hall
Click to see the full agenda
ASPIRE was established in May 2009 as the first association in Central Europe of business services and technology companies. The sole focus of the association is Kraków.
ASPIRE currently brings together 120 companies operating in the sector in Kraków.
ASPIRE’s mission is “to make Kraków the best city in the world for global technology and business services.” Our aim is to achieve this by harnessing the rich potential of Kraków’s people, institutions, and natural environment for our mutual benefit, also ensuring that all those who contribute to our development are enriched by the interaction.
Cooperation, shared learning and collaboration are at the heart of the ASPIRE way of doing things and our Annual General Meeting is where we come together to exchange views on the state of the industry, unveil our programme for the current year to address challenges and opportunities, and elect representatives to our management bodies.
Our Impact
ASPIRE is widely credited within the industry as a key driver in Kraków’s evolution as a European hub for technology and business services. Today 200+ centres are located in the city, employing upwards of 120,000 people and contributing in the region of 17.28 billion PLN to GDP.
The industry has had a wide-ranging impact on the City. First and foremost has been its impact on young people, offering increasingly attractive and well-paid jobs and helping to develop a young, professional class. Within this context the industry also has a deeply symbiotic relationship with the city’s academic sector, with over 70% of employees graduates of Kraków universities, and an evolving cooperation in skills development and research.
Other significant impacts can be seen in the shape of the urban landscape, peppered now with modern office buildings; on demand for public transport and housing; deep synergies with the tourism sector, and moving forward a potential spill over of talent into other sectors of the economy.
This year’s meeting
This year’s meeting is especially important. Certainties on which the industry has operated – process improvement, digital implementation and migration of more complex processes as skills advance and trust deepens – are disrupted by a tsunami of challenges, from the huge leap forward in the capability of machine learning and artificial intelligence to perform tasks to global economic and political upheaval which threatens the assumptions of globalisation.
The Dragon’s Teeth
Every year ASPIRE seeks to gather members and stakeholders behind a phrase that captures our current phase of development. This year we aim to capture the challenge in the phrase, the Dragon’s Teeth.
By reference to the Dragon, we reference Kraków’s founding myth. By the Dragon’s Teeth, we refer to the Greek myth of the sowing of the dragon’s teeth, from which upshot an army of warriors that build the city of Thebes.
Our dragon’s teeth are the talents and the capability that have evolved in our centres and in symbiosis with Kraków’s universities over the 20+ years of the industry’s development in Kraków. The question before us is what now is required to transform from teeth to warriors and where and how will the war be won.
ASPIRE’s 2025 Programme
ASPIRE’s 2025 programme will be unveiled during the meeting. This includes a 3-day conference from 7-9 October under the title The Dragon’s Teeth. The first 2 days of the conference will take place at Forty Kleparz and are envisaged as having more the atmosphere of a festival than a conference. They will celebrate all our industry has achieved in Kraków over 20 years. The third day is envisaged as a Symposium bringing together key leaders from the local community and abroad to map Kraków’s best future.
Two other main elements are initiatives to strengthen cooperation with local stakeholders. We are currently engaged in research which will audit how and why companies in our industry engage with universities. Our aim is to establish a University-Business Forum which will make available a range of resources to both communities to deepen our cooperation, as well as opportunities to work together on new initiatives. We also plan a Place Commission to highlight how and why Kraków is important to our future development.
Cooperation with the City of Kraków
ASPIRE has always stood shoulder to shoulder with the City of Kraków. The City supported the founding of the association and in 2013 ASPIRE received the Honoris Gratia from the Mayor for services to the City. Over the years, it has become a tradition for our General Meeting to be held in the Council Chambers and for the meeting to be addressed by the Mayor. We are pleased that once again the meeting will take place under the patronage of the Mayor.
