CIC Warsaw and Venture Café Warsaw have officially opened their Innovation Campus for Warsaw residents and tenants
On June 29th, CIC and Venture Café Warsaw officially opened their Innovation Campus to the public and clients. The 8,000 square meter campus includes CIC Warsaw, providing premium, flexible coworking, and shared office space for startups, scaleups, and innovative businesses, and unique event and networking spaces operated by Venture Café Warsaw. These include District Hall, which offers a free and open public lounge and beautiful event spaces, and TrendHouse, a members-only space for entrepreneurs and innovators.
The opening of the campus signifies an important addition and next step in the Warsaw innovation ecosystem and will look specifically to serve, support, and connect entrepreneurs and innovators in technology, life sciences, and more.
CIC Warsaw is Cambridge Innovation Center’s first location in Central and Eastern Europe. Since 1999, CIC has hosted over 6,500 companies. In the first CIC center in Cambridge, the world’s most popular mobile operating system, Android from Google, was developed. Today, CIC gathers over 2,000 entities conducting both commercial and nonprofit activities in many industries.
CIC creates a unique, global, and extremely active community that combines business, science, and capital.
— Jerzy Brodzikowski, General Manager, CIC Warsaw
An open community of innovators
The heart of the Innovation Campus is District Hall, a platform for social innovation open to all Warsaw residents. It is a place that offers an open zone for work, a café, and space for informal meetings. Apart from District Hall which is open to the public, the Innovation Campus space consists of two other elements: Trend House and CIC’s workspaces.
Trend House is a special space designed for a selected group of entrepreneurs, academics, and representatives of corporations, and, at the same time, a platform to animate cooperation between the world of big business and smaller organizations such as startups or scaleups.
CIC Warsaw provides spaces tailored to the needs of dynamically growing, innovative companies. Private offices and teamwork rooms, fully equipped kitchens, and comfortable conference rooms provide the opportunity to focus on business without distractions. Smaller entities can rent single desks in the coworking zone.
CIC Warsaw is a catalyst for innovation — it creates conditions particularly conducive to the development of businesses operating in the field of technology.
— Jerzy Brodzikowski, General Manager, CIC Warsaw
First tenants move into CIC Warsaw
At the beginning of July, the first tenants moved into office space at CIC Warsaw. Among them are American medtech scaleup Precision Life, animation studio Pigeon Studio, and training company Apexnet.
We have already exceeded our plans to commercialize our space at this stage of CIC Warsaw’s development.
— Izabela Górska, Cofounder and Managing Director of CIC Poland, Sales Lead, CIC Warsaw
Currently, tenants can use 6,000 sq. meters of CIC Warsaw and 2,000 sq. meters of District Hall and Trend House space. The target is to eventually grow to 14,000 sq. meters within the building. By the end of 2021, Investors Floor will be opened, which will be used mainly by representatives of investment funds supporting the development of innovation.
Safety and “the new normal”
CIC Warsaw is adapted to the challenges of the current global health crisis. In conference rooms, offices, events, and coworking spaces, there are limits on the number of people who can stay in such rooms: 1 person per 4 sq. meters. All persons staying at CIC Warsaw are asked to keep a distance of 1.5 meters from other space users. There is a 2 meter distance between all desks.
All rooms and common areas have bright, clear, and visible safety information. The entire space is also meticulously disinfected several times a day. All tenants of CIC Warsaw have been informed about the applicable regulations and safety rules.
Moreover, in all CIC locations around the world, tenants receive a special gadget that allows them to safely use touchscreens (e.g. in conference rooms or printers) and open doors. For the highest security, the touchscreens of the printers are covered with nano-septic coating.
CIC Warsaw partners
Creating a CIC Warsaw community would not be possible without the involvement of partners.
The investor of CIC and the owner of the Varso Place building in which the CIC Warsaw space is located is HB Reavis. Gleeds Polska supported the execution of finishing and arrangement, and works as a representative of the tenant, providing services in the field of investment management, investment cost management, and acting as supervision inspectors. Workplace was responsible for executing the vision of CIC Warsaw’s space design, created by CIC’s design team.
An important partner of CIC Warsaw is Venture Café Warsaw. Venture Café Warsaw is a nonprofit organization that brings innovators together. It animates the community to be more diverse, inclusive, accessible, and better connected — locally, nationally, and globally.
About Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC)
CIC is a global leader in building and operating innovation communities. Founded in 1999 in Cambridge, MA, CIC is one of the first companies to offer flexible office space and coworking options for innovators and entrepreneurs with the mission to find solutions that fix the world’s problems. As of 2019, CIC has approximately 1.2M square feet (110K m2) open and in development in nine cities. The company has supported over 6,000 startup and technology companies, and over $8 billion has been invested in companies that began within CIC spaces. The company is privately held and has cofounded a number of mission-aligned organizations including Venture Café, CIC’s rapidly growing global network of nonprofit innovation ecosystem-building organizations, as well as District Hall, Impact Hub Boston, LabCentral, and MassRobotics. Over the next ten years, CIC plans to grow its network of innovation hubs to create positive impact in 50 leading cities around the world. More info at cic.com.
About CIC Warsaw
CIC Warsaw is the first Cambridge Innovation Center location in CEE. In Warsaw’s Varso Place, a 14,000-sq. meter campus is being built, which includes spaces for companies operating in today’s most important areas for innovation: sustainable development, digital transformation of real estate, the Internet of Things, security, and space technologies. Apart from hubs, CIC is also creating a 3D prototyping space in Warsaw, a common work zone for international companies, an exclusive business club, and an area for social innovation available to all, District Hall.
If you wish to expand your business in this part of the world, CIC Warsaw is here for you! Schedule a tour and become part of our growing community.
