Today, 55% of the world's population lives in urban areas and is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Existing urban systems need to adapt to a growing population to sustain and provide a healthy, smart and green environment, resulting in emerging markets and growing demand for Health Tech, Smart City and Greentech solutions.
The main focus of URBAN TECH is to support value chain innovations defining the future of the global growing urban environment. Long-term strategic objective of the project is to increase the competitiveness of European urban tech industries globally, accelerate the competitive success of European SMEs through the market launch of new or significantly improved products and services with higher quality, eco-innovative, resource-efficient, and internationally scalable.
URBAN TECH is therefore aiming to establish long-term cooperation between SMEs/startups with big corporations, public sector authorities at national/interregional level and other innovation actors with a common vision of the urban future. To do that, the project is implementing a staged process for SME/startups innovation validation and entrepreneurship support across local ecosystems relying on different phases:
1)Explore: Mapping the challenges and needs across the 3 emerging industries and their application fields in collaboration with local, regional, national authorities, policymakers, corporates, entrepreneurs, researchers and wider public.
2)Ideate: Collecting ideas for innovation projects offered by start-ups and SMEs from different sectors and countries, solving the challenges in urban environment previously identified.
3)Implement: provided SMEs/Startups teams with innovation, product, and business development support programme to establish an appropriate business model and refine the ideas into working prototypes
4)Go Global: Supporting SMEs and start-ups in scaling their solutions and products globally with support and opportunities and further partnership building across EU and AC.
5)Final Event: The project will culminate in a high-profile final event, enhancing visibility for top solution providers. This event will feature networking opportunities, an engaging pitching competition, and awards recognizing top-performing companies in each category.
