STARTUP3 and the European IP Help Desk invite you to join a webinar – The importance of IP for SMEs!

Intellectual property (IP) and its value often not adequately taken into account and tackled by small businesses and startups alike. In the increasingly knowledge-driven economy, IP is a key consideration in day-to-day business decisions. New products, brands, and creative designs appear almost daily on the market and are the result of continuous human innovation and creativity. However, SMEs and startups often lack the time, resources, or knowledge to address IP issues.

On January 13^th 2021, from 10:30 to 12:00 CET a training webinar called “The importance of IP for SMEs” will take place. Hosted by the European IP helpdesk, this training is dedicated to the STARTUP3 cohort, but is open to everyone.

The European Commission aims to help SMEs use IP more effectively by providing a coherent policy of IP support for SMEs, tools such as IP Helpdesk and by regularly monitoring the support available to small businesses.

Why and How?

SMEs can protect their innovative solution or improved solution by obtaining a patent that can give a business a competitive advantage. Patent protection gives them the right to exclude others, allowing them to fend off competition, assume a lead, and secure market position. If left unprotected, a good invention or creation may be lost to larger competitors that are in a better position to commercialize the product or service at a more affordable price, leaving the original inventor or creator without any financial benefit or reward. Adequate protection of a company’s IP is a crucial step in deterring potential infringement and in turning ideas into business assets with a real market value. After the training, participants should be able to address the following:

• What is Intellectual Property (IP)?
• What are Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)?
• Common problems of SMEs in their day to day activities?
• Why should I deal with IP/IPR issues? Why should IP be an integral part of my business strategy?
• How can IP be a business asset?
• Which IP protection tools exist/can I use (e. g. trademarks, patents etc.)?
• To which institutions can I turn for help?

This training is part of the STARTUP3 acceleration programme and is open to any SMEs willing to initiate re-think their strategy, and tackle IP in order to protect their solutions.

Registration is free of charge, but still mandatory. Hope to see you there and Happy holidays!

GATEKEEPER project launched an open call for startups, SMEs, midcaps, industry or research technology organisations active in AI and Big Data applications!

The open call aims to engage actively new technology members in it’s ecosystem supplying new AI and Big Data applications, tools or components which will be incorporated in the technology offering portfolio of GATEKEEPER to Pilots and Platform designers and developers.  The project duration lasts 12 months starting on March 2021.

The total Budget is 600.000€, with a maximum of 10 projects funded and the deadline is January 29^th 2021 at 5 pm CET.

The Open Call can be found here.

The webinar of the open call for potential applicants will take place on Wednesday 16th December 13:00-14:00 (CET). During the webinar, the Gatekeeper team will answer any questions you may have about the 1st Open call.

Webinar access details: 

URL: https://medtronic.zoom.us/j/96075354567?

GATEKEEPER is a European Multi Centric Large-Scale Pilot on Smart Living Environments, with main objective to enable the creation of a platform that connects healthcare providers, businesses, entrepreneurs, and elderly citizens and the communities they live in, for the origination of an open, trust-based arena for matching ideas, technologies, user needs and processes, aimed at ensuring healthier independent lives for the ageing populations. It’s scope is the application of advanced ICT to tackle the challenge of improving the quality of life of citizens, while demonstrating its significant efficiency gains in health and care delivery across Europe.

Apply before January 29^th, 2021

For more information, please visit GATEKEEPER on www.gatekeeper-project.eu, or follow them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Youtube.

Founded in 2017 by 4 space industry experts and image analysis gurus, Latitudo 40 has combined the 20 years of experience of the “aged” founders to the multidisciplinary and young team which has grown to over 10 people. The team has now artificial intelligence, machine learning, image processing experts, UIX specialists, and business development professionals. Our vision is to give easy access to satellite images for everyone. We bring together data and algorithms from multiple sources and provide straightforward information to understand our planet from above.

The EarthAlytics cloud platform developed by Latitudo40 provides quick and easy access to all the information contained in Copernicus and Commercial High-Resolution satellite images. The platform is based on three fundamental pillars, access to the satellite catalogues of the main suppliers (Airbus, Planet, Maxar), process automation, and the use of AI/ML algorithms to analyse and interpret the images and user-friendly dashboards. Latitudo40 offers vertical solutions in the precision agriculture sector, urban planning, and monitoring, smart infrastructures. 

The solution is characterised by a very simplified and intuitive customer journey, which allows access to the necessary monitoring information in just a few minutes. 

The platform is designed to be simply integrated into any IT infrastructure of our customers, thanks to standard connectors, already available and usable with a Zero Code approach.

“Innovation is part of our DNA and, in addition to developing product activities, we like to take on new challenges in the international arena”, said Gaetano Volpe, CEO of the Latitudo40. The Latitudo40 team has decided to participate in the CEF Digital Innovation Challenge to test itself with the integration of open solutions (context broker, eDelivery, and Blockchain) offered by the European Commission. 

They want to use open solutions as a tool to accelerate the development and scalability of the project. 

During the first Bootcamp phase, the solutions were validated, and a pitch with the Urban Analytics application was presented. 

They focused, among the available open solutions,  on ContextBroker  (to standardize the model of access to open data available in the municipalities and data lakes of our clients) and on Blockchain (to create a model of notarization of the information processed, to give greater transparency and reliability to our fully automated processing processes). Both challenges have been completed, they have started the process of fully integrating the solutions into the cloud platform. 

Latitudo40 was among the finalists, together with CleverBooks and OpenContent, bringing for the first time a remote sensing solution with blockchain integration. The final result saw Latitudo40 arrive second, behind CleverBooks, but with great satisfaction. 

The Digital Innovation Challenge allowed Latitudo40 to make their vision of easy access to remote sensing images as a tool to create sustainable and resilient cities known internationally and, above all, within the European Commission and CEF, through new applications that allow public decision-makers to make informed decisions.

Their roadmap is very clear; they launched the product for the precision farming sector a few months ago. Also, they are preparing to launch the platform for urban monitoring in early 2021, for which they already have over 10 letters of interest from major European cities. They want to contribute to environmental sustainability and the fight against climate change. These battles must start from cities, which already host more than half the world’s population.

Join the REACH Incubator to get up to €120K, and opportunity to work with leading corporations and their proprietary data!

First REACH Incubator Open Call is ready for applications

The REACH Incubator has a €3.5 Million fund to foster the creation of data value chains across Europe and is looking for 30 promising big data startups and SMEs to take part in its first round of incubation. 

REACH is an incubation programme, run by 10 core partners and 9 data providers. It will create a fertile ground for startups and SMEs to solve real-world challenges of large corporations and conduct experimentation of secured and trusted data-fuelled solutions which utilize proprietary, often multi-stakeholder, industrial and personal data.

The REACH Incubator provides the following benefits:

• Up to €120,000 in Equity Free Funding
• Access to Large Corporations and their Industrial data sets
• Access to Digital and Business Skills
• REACH toolbox for secure and trusted data value chains
• Big Data Computing Infrastructure
• Access to Private Investment
• Visibility

The programme takes startups through 4 intense stages of technical and business growth (EXPLORE, EXPERIMENT, EVOLVE and EXPOSE) over eleven months, and will go through 3 incubation rounds in its three-and-a-half-year project duration. Due to Covid-19, REACH will take all the precautionary safety measures and implement its incubation services online, whenever on-site meeting and trainings are not allowed.

How does it work?

Interested startups and SMEs have three ways of applying and participating in REACH Incubator.

THEME-DRIVEN (Track 1): REACH consortium has in collaboration with the 3 leading European Digital Innovation Hubs onboard defined the cross-sectorial Data Value Chain (DVC) themes to be tackled by participants. DVC themes available in the first open call are tourism & entertainment, energy, retail, healthcare & insurance, health, manufacturing/industry.

READY-MADE (Track 2): Applications will deal with challenges defined by the REACH Data Providers according to the needs detected in their market (JOT Internet Media, Migros Ticaret A.Ş., Sonae MC, Yapı Kredi Teknoloji, De Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie nv (VRT), Play&go experience, Idea75, Almerys, Biscay Government).

FREE CHOICE (Track 3): Applicants will devise novel DVCs by bringing their own data provider/s and/or their own datasets with those already facilitated within the REACH Data Catalogue. The applicant, a single SME, will apply together with their own Data Provider/s (at least one) proposing a joint challenge to be solved.

Are you ready for open innovation opportunity?

Apply before 15 February 2021

For more information, please visit REACH on www.reach-incubator.eu, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Reserve your place at the REACH Webinar to find out more

 December 16th, 13:00 CET

JOIN THE DAPSI PROGRAMME AND GET UP TO €150K, TECHNICAL & BUSINESS SUPPORT, AND
ACCESS TO TOP INFRASTRUCTURE!

The Data Portability and Services Incubator (DAPSI) is launching its second Open Call to distribute 2.1 Million Euros to internet innovators, empowering them to develop new solutions in the Data Portability field.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has the purpose of making significantly easier for citizens to have any data which is stored with one service provider transmitted directly to another provider. But in most cases, it is still difficult to do so.

DAPSI will support top-notch projects through a 9-month supporting programme where experts in diverse fields will provide a successful working methodology, access to top infrastructure, training in business and data related topics, coaching, mentoring, and a vibrant ecosystem. On top of that, each DAPSI project can receive grants up to €150k.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

In a two-phase supporting programme, the projects will develop advanced solutions in the Data Portability field, attend training sessions, pitch and access top infrastructures, with coaching support.Some of those projects will progress to the second phase where the solutions will be fostered to evolve into solid projects to gain enough traction for deployment and get ready for the market.

ABOUT DAPSI

The Data Portability and Services Incubator (DAPSI) is a EU funded project, under the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, to empower top internet innovators to develop human-centric solutions, addressing the challenge of personal data portability on the internet, as foreseen under the GDPR.

The project is operated by 6 partners: Zabala Innovation Consulting (Spain), F6S (Ireland), Cap Digital (France), IMT Starter (France), Fraunhofer IAIS (Germany), and Engineering (Italy).

Next Generation Internet (NGI) is an EU initiative that aims to shape the development of the Internet into an Internet of humans that responds to people’s fundamental needs, including trust, security and inclusion, and reflects the values and the norms that we enjoy in Europe.

€2.1 MILLION FUND AND SUPPORTING PROGRAMME TO
EMPOWER DATA PORTABILITY INNOVATORS

Apply before 20 January, 2021

For more information, please visit DAPSI on www.dapsi.ngi.eu, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

STARTUP3 encourages AI & ML innovators to apply now to X-Europe!

The Startup Europe programme offers training, matchmaking, and promotion opportunities to deep tech startups and unites the network and services of F6S, TNW, Design Terminal, Growth Tribe, and TechChill.

The EU-funded programme X-Europe aims to foster the growth of leading European deep tech startups by providing top-notch training and services and guiding partnerships with investors, corporations, and governments. The programme is designed and run by five leaders in the startup community:  F6S, TNW, Design Terminal, Growth Tribe, and TechChill.

The X-Europe has been going strong for 9 months now, with two cohorts,  HealthTech and AgriTech successfully delivering a growth programme and a plethora of matchmaking opportunities to 52 cutting edge deeptech startups. TNW Event has been a pinnacle of the two cohorts, where our startups have digitally mingled among the global business elite, showing a keen eye for developing and commercializing innovative solutions and shining with their flying colours.

We are thrilled to launch the open call 3 for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning focused startups. AI & ML Open Call 3 is seeking 25 startups to participate from January to May 2021. They’ll benefit from the programme’s matchmaking, training, and promotional value. Additionally, X-Europe seeks to connect ecosystems across Europe and allow opportunities, companies, and capital to flow freely across the continent. All services of the X-Europe programme are provided free of charge thanks to Startup Europe.

25 selected deeptech startups get:

• Free entry and showcasing at Tech Chill’s conference in May of 2021
• Matchmaking with investors
• Building partnerships with corporations – your idea might be the right solution to their business challenge
• Free in-person and online training, including market-leading courses from Growth Tribe
• One-on-one mentoring
• Jobs and talent matchmaking
• Media exposure
• The possibility of joining the Acceleration week at Design Terminal and access TechChill’s and TNW’s community Incubators

APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN for Cohort 3 – Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Apply before 27 November 17:00 CET

For more information, please visit X-Europe on www.xeurope.eu, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 871795.

ITC – Innovation Technology Cluster and STARTUP3 Accelerator consortium virtually organized the Ecosystem Discovery Mission event in Slovenia on the November 12th, 2020. The webinar was divided into two parts, with a multi-stakeholder approach being formalized within the event, where we have the presence of SMEs, business support organisations, Universities, industry, and also public organisations.

The main objective was to allow participants to understand and “feel” the hosting ecosystem, learn about the processes to boost innovation in Slovenia, find out about the available resources and capacity to support the growth of SMEs’.

The first part was dedicated to take a deep look at the startup ecosystem in Slovenia, where some key players, who are coming from different support environments (private, university, and public) presented their initiatives and view on what is the best way to support the startup community. This included also presentations from Investor 1337 Works, which is included into the corporate pool of the project, and presentation from ArrowFast Medical Device Engineering, which is part of the big industry player in MedTech, Cosylab.

The second part of the webinar was dedicated to startup acceleration and pitching. Experts George Megas and Ornella Solari spoke about different opportunities for startups (financing and others) and coach them on how to properly sell their stories to the investors. The webinar was concluded by a pitching session, where 10 startups show their skills in pitching, while participants voted the best one. This small competition has been won by startup Fauna Smart Technologies, who was given a 5-day pass to the Hello Tomorrow Sumit and dedicated mentorship from ITC.

The pitching session was an introduction to the event organized by ITC on the 24^th of November 2020, where participants from Farm2Fork Hackathon will pitch to win awards. Anyone interested can still register and join the event.

ELCA, in the framework of the COSME-funded CYBER SECURE LIGHT project, organises a capacity building webinar “HOW TO PITCH…THE EIC ACCELERATOR JURY?”

The objective of the webinar is for participants to gain an understanding of how the EIC Accelerator works focusing on the process and selection criteria during the interview stage. The session will cover insights on the purpose of the interview round and what it consists of, what to expect and specific guidance on how to prepare for the pitch/Q&A part. During the webinar, participants will also receive practical advice on creating and delivering a convincing pitch. The knowledge and advice delivered during the webinar will help participants to pitch with confidence and alleviate fears.

Topics:

• About the EIC Accelerator

• Selection criteria & process

• What to expect during the interview stage

• How to create and deliver a convincing pitch

• How to prepare for the Q&A session

• Pitching tips & advice

Expert: Sandra Wycech, EIC Accelerator Evaluator since 2018, startup mentor, formerly Bank of Ireland Innovation, Deliveroo, MyTaxi.

Hello Tomorrow Global Summit — the essential event to take stock of the major emerging trends and the most promising projects of the deep-tech!

Cutting edge ‘deep’ technologies have never been so important in driving necessary change and propelling solutions forward to the crises our planet currently faces, and those that are yet to come. Taking place this year on November 16th-20th, The Hello Tomorrow Global Summit 2020 is going fully virtual, bringing thousands of attendees to the forefront of new ideas, uncovering the most promising new projects from synthetic biology to quantum physics. We foster collaboration between industry leaders, startups, researchers and experts in the deep tech network from all over the world.

Unlike existing digital platforms and apps, future “deep” technologies will advance the technological frontier. Deep-tech innovations are disruptive solutions built around unique, protected or hard-to-reproduce technological or scientific advances.

Deep tech innovations lie at the crossroads of massive shifts in demand led by megatrends (such as global climate change, demographic shifts, resource scarcity, and an ageing population) and scientific progress (such as the discovery of the CRISPR-Cas microbial adaptive immune system) and are impacting all industries.

On the occasion of the annual Hello Tomorrow conference in Paris, the best startups, investors and key players in the scientific and technological ecosystem come together to exchange and compare their visions of innovations, to question their impact, but also ethical considerations, regulations and policies surrounding them.

The Venture Summit, EIT Food’s annual event for the entrepreneur community, returns this year as a virtual event!

The Venture Summit brings together rich network of startups, investors, EIT Food partners and other key stakeholders active in agrifood innovation.

After the huge success of Paris and Lisbon, the third edition of the Venture Summit is now 100% virtual – and it’s going to be the biggest yet.  

From the comfort of your own home, you can explore commercial partnerships and investment opportunities with 130+ high-impact startups through our online platform, and hear pitches from a select group of some of EIT Food’s leading entrepreneurs.

In the 3-D expo space, you’ll be immersed in a walkthrough marketplace which will capture the feel of a real event, allowing you to visit virtual startup stands and arrange individual meetings with founders to explore opportunities in:

Alternative Proteins
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable aquaculture
Digitalised traceability
Circular food systems
Targeted nutrition  

This is also a chance to learn about EIT Food flagship entrepreneurship programmes and meet other agritech leaders.

Take a look at last year’s edition