Welcome to „Discover CEE“!

This is Raiffeisen Bank International’s blog and information platform for leading experts, analysts and successful entrepreneurs and companies, to share their ideas, visions and experiences about doing business in CEE. Our goal is to connect opinion leaders, inspire entrepreneurs and businesses and show the potential, diversity and beauty of the entire CEE region.

  • “We must be as modular as Lego”

    By Christof Danz, RBI | The terms innovation, digitization and customer experience are currently on everyone’s lips. Discover CEE spoke with Christian Wolf, Head of Strategic Partnerships & Ecosystems, about how he interprets these terms, why APIs are is so important and what we can learn from Lego bricks. When did the topic of digitization […]

  • Public Holidays 2021 in CEE

    Are you planning a business trip to the CEE region? Or would you like to know on which dates your business partner in CEE is on public holidays? The Discover CEE Public Holidays 2021 overview shows all the dates at one glance. Wherever planning a trip to the CEE region, also keep in mind that […]

  • Christmas Traditions in CEE

    By Benedikta Schlange, RBI | Christmas is approaching and the preparations for the festivities are already underway. We looked at what interesting Christmas traditions there are in CEE. Let us put you in the mood for a merry Christmas right now. Albania Christmas Eve is called “Nata e Krishtit” in Albanian. At Nata e Krishtit […]

  • Austria: After the second lockdown, before the next rebound?

    By Matthias Reith and Gunter Deuber, RBI | While Austria opted as one of the first countries in Western Europe for a hard lockdown in spring, it was not a “first mover” in the second wave of lockdowns. And both subjects have a connection with each other, and this is exactly where the problem lies. […]

  • “It’s all about the team effort”

    By Patricia Lang-Schönberger, RBI| We talked to Christoph Strasser, extreme sports athlete about collaboration, the importance of a strong team spirit and how we can keep up the latter in times where we spend most of the time at home office, without the usual social contacts to our colleagues. What can we learn from extreme […]

  • A reflection on CE/SEE recovery and convergence prospects in COVID-19 times

    By Gunter Deuber, RBI Vienna, Dorota Strauch, RBI in Poland, Zoltan Török, Head of Research at Raiffeisen Bank in Hungary and Zrinka Zivkovic Matijevic, Head of Research at Raiffeisen Bank in Croatia | The COVID-19 crisis is certainly a watershed event. After the deep 2020 economic slump, it could take until 2021 or 2022 for […]

  • “Act our way to new thinking” – Jenni Jepsen about Agile

    Jenni Jepsen is a transformation advisor at Denmark-based goAgile. She helps transforming organizations to achieve a lasting change. By working closely with the organizations, Jenni supports the people there in increasing organizational effectiveness, motivation and results. She consults, writes and speaks worldwide about leadership, communications and Agile. For Discover CEE, she answered some questions on […]

  • Working the agile way – why „common sense“ is almost a hype

    By Patricia Lang-Schönberger, RBI| Vanja Tokić has been Group Community Lead & Agile Coach for Advanced Analytics & Artificial Intelligence at RBI since 2018. He is responsible for nurturing the group-wide AA&AI Community across the RBI Group. He also supports the internal start-up team to continuously deliver data-driven innovations, by utilizing agile methodologies (Scrum/Kanban) and […]

  • Lived sustainability in CEE

    By Benedikta Schlange, RBI| Do you want to experience CEE’s sustainable lifestyle? We have researched a few examples for you here. Feel free to add additional ideas in the comments! Fashion from Romania: Gnana was founded in 2017 by Floriana Sandu.Floriana Sandu and her team only work with natural materials of which 60 per cent […]