Periodic Reporting for period 2 - URBAN TECH (Value chain innovations in emerging Health Tech, Smart City and Greentech industries addressing the challenges of smart urban environment)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-03-01 do 2024-08-31
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.
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.
The first phase, identifying challenges in Health Tech, Smart City, and Green Tech, yielded 310 challenges from 13 EU countries across 36 business sectors, now available in the Virtual Library.
The second phase collected ideas from start-ups/SMEs via an open call, receiving 559 applications from 318 SMEs/Startups across 36 EU and AC countries by September 2022. Of these, 323 solutions attended international hackathons in November 2022, with 130 receiving travel vouchers. Ultimately, 80 promising projects advanced to the MVP phase, gaining financial (9,500€ MVP Voucher) and technical support from March to May 2023.
In June 2023, 33 SMEs/start-ups received Piloting Vouchers (20,000-30,000€) to refine prototypes and tailored support. Starting in September 2023, these SMEs underwent training for internationalization through expert meetings, trade events, and networking.
By February 2024, 23 SMEs were further supported with Market Discovery Vouchers (up to 14,000€) for global scaling, resulting in 55 partnerships in 21 countries across 4 continents by June 2024.
Throughout, project activities were presented at scientific conferences and concluded with a comprehensive sustainability strategy to extend project impact post-completion.
Final video with a summary of URBAN TECH achievements https://youtu.be/E_V4gp5DdHg?si=v-ZUD1_kOxnuyQIo(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)
The second phase collected ideas from start-ups/SMEs via an open call, receiving 559 applications from 318 SMEs/Startups across 36 EU and AC countries by September 2022. Of these, 323 solutions attended international hackathons in November 2022, with 130 receiving travel vouchers. Ultimately, 80 promising projects advanced to the MVP phase, gaining financial (9,500€ MVP Voucher) and technical support from March to May 2023.
In June 2023, 33 SMEs/start-ups received Piloting Vouchers (20,000-30,000€) to refine prototypes and tailored support. Starting in September 2023, these SMEs underwent training for internationalization through expert meetings, trade events, and networking.
By February 2024, 23 SMEs were further supported with Market Discovery Vouchers (up to 14,000€) for global scaling, resulting in 55 partnerships in 21 countries across 4 continents by June 2024.
Throughout, project activities were presented at scientific conferences and concluded with a comprehensive sustainability strategy to extend project impact post-completion.
Final video with a summary of URBAN TECH achievements https://youtu.be/E_V4gp5DdHg?si=v-ZUD1_kOxnuyQIo(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)
The activities of URBAN TECH project are designed to create maximum impact for innovation and start-up ecosystem players and drive economic growth. The core value of the project is in its joint (cross-border & interdisciplinary) collaboration, knowledge exchange, expertise, and networks, which foster new value chains and trigger emerging industries as well as other societal, economic, and environmental impacts. Urban Tech has been able so far to touch and nurture the achievement of the expected impacts by applying since the beginning a user-driven process of societal innovations for urban environment:
• URBAN TECH called for innovative ideas clearly addressing societal or consumer demands and specific problems. The collection and mapping of 310 coming from 13 different countries of Europe summed with the call for solutions which found more than 318 potential SME/startup from 36 countries on EU and AC able to work on solving 234 of them, has stimulated and reinforced the cross-border and cross-sectoral interconnections of all the relevant stakeholders from Health Tech, Green Tech and Smart Cities value chains of Europe.
• The project has provided SMEs and Startups with all-around support to create a tailored product, the content and technical specifications which corresponds to the specific needs and expectations of societal and industrial challenges that led to innovative technical or service innovation solutions and market ready products.
• The connected incubation program in 9 technology parks for 80 SMEs/Startups coming from all over Europe creates the basis for a shared ecosystem. The increased collaboration and networking with cross-border and cross-industry teams around selected ideas, the access to network of experts and mentors from different ecosystem and sectors creates a fertile ground for further value propositions and opportunities that will last beyond Urban Tech lifetime.
• Through new industrial value chains in Health Tech, Smart City and Greentech industries, 80 MVPs/services/business models were developed during the first half time of the project and 33 tested and demonstrated products ready for market during the second half time of the project, 23 of which have already explored their potential on international market. That contributed to a major step further to smart, clean and connected cities, more environmentally friendly and energy efficient, ecological solutions in the urban environment, increase standards of living and led to economic growth.
• URBAN TECH called for innovative ideas clearly addressing societal or consumer demands and specific problems. The collection and mapping of 310 coming from 13 different countries of Europe summed with the call for solutions which found more than 318 potential SME/startup from 36 countries on EU and AC able to work on solving 234 of them, has stimulated and reinforced the cross-border and cross-sectoral interconnections of all the relevant stakeholders from Health Tech, Green Tech and Smart Cities value chains of Europe.
• The project has provided SMEs and Startups with all-around support to create a tailored product, the content and technical specifications which corresponds to the specific needs and expectations of societal and industrial challenges that led to innovative technical or service innovation solutions and market ready products.
• The connected incubation program in 9 technology parks for 80 SMEs/Startups coming from all over Europe creates the basis for a shared ecosystem. The increased collaboration and networking with cross-border and cross-industry teams around selected ideas, the access to network of experts and mentors from different ecosystem and sectors creates a fertile ground for further value propositions and opportunities that will last beyond Urban Tech lifetime.
• Through new industrial value chains in Health Tech, Smart City and Greentech industries, 80 MVPs/services/business models were developed during the first half time of the project and 33 tested and demonstrated products ready for market during the second half time of the project, 23 of which have already explored their potential on international market. That contributed to a major step further to smart, clean and connected cities, more environmentally friendly and energy efficient, ecological solutions in the urban environment, increase standards of living and led to economic growth.