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The Prague-based company Homeport, which is operating successful bike sharing schemes all around the world, including Great Britain, France or Saudi Arabia, is planning to launch its services in Prague. The company wants to take part in a public tender for bike sharing operators, which should be announced by Prague City Hall by the end of the year. Apart from traditional bikes, Homeport would also like to introduce electric bikes, which they believe are the best solution for Prague’s hilly terrain.

The Czech jewellery and glass industry is still inextricably linked with the north Bohemian city of Jablonec nad Nisou although the business has gone through a tough couple of decades with the workforce in the sector shrinking to around a third of what is was 20 years ago. It now shows confident signs of revival.

Prague was a big hitter in the film world for around a decade until 2008, becoming a venue to shoot high cost feature films. But the shoots started going elsewhere when the Czech Republic failed to roll out the sort of film subsidies other locations were offering. That eventually changed and Prague has clawed its way back as a venue, though perhaps not the first choice one that it once was.

The sharing economy is one of those vogue terms that can perhaps best be explained by some of the concepts which have been made possible by the Internet, digital applications, and credit cards. Crowd funding is one. Others are flat and house renting applications such as Airbnb or Booking, or perhaps one of the most famous of all, the car renting and delivery service, Uber. But they have often clashed with tradition sectors of the economy, like hotels and taxi firms, and authorities are looking on and wondering whether to regulate.

In what looks like one of the biggest deals of the year, two originally Czech computer antivirus security companies have announced they are getting together with the likelihood of putting Prague and the Czech Republic permanently on the map as the home of one of the world’s leaders in the sector.

Competitiveness is one of those vogue terms that appears to be employing a lot of grey matter around the world. And the Czech Republic is no exception with the government, business groups, and recently one lawmaker from the upper house of parliament, the Senate, looking over the entrails of the local economy to determine how it’s doing compared with the rest of the world and what the future holds.

The British vote on whether to stay or leave the EU takes place Thursday with most recent polls suggesting a very close race indeed. And its no exaggeration to say that that the British vote is being followed with trepidation across the rest of Europe, including Prague, with the economic and political repercussions likely to be substantial.

After the worries and shakiness of the last decade or so in Europe’s banking and financial sector, financial stability is no longer seen as a given but as something that has to be constantly safeguarded and, where necessary, regulated for. The Czech Republic came out largely unscathed from Europe’s last financial crisis, no large banks were bailed out and the biggest institutions are regarded as significant cash cows for their foreign owners. But the national bank has identified risk areas where it would like to see tighter control to make sure

The European Single Market is one of the achievements of the political and economic partnership that is the EU. But many companies and some governments now feel short changed over the delivery of its full benefits and are calling for urgent reform as a new digital revolution looms on the horizon.

Prague last week hosted an international symposium about Smart Cities. The concept is a fairly simple one: to marry the latest information and communication technologies so that cities can run more efficiently and in a more environment and citizen friendly fashion. And Czech universities, banks, companies, and towns and cities are taking part in the moves to try and harness technology so that urban areas operate differently.