Big data has a huge role to play in innovation. Making it more freely available can create fresh new insights that lead to novel solutions and products.
To make it easier for European startups and SMEs to take advantage of big data’s potential, a new European-funded open innovation project, led by Southampton University has been launched. It’s called Data Pitch.
This innovation accelerator will provide up to 50 companies with business support that includes mentoring, thousands of dollars’ worth of equity free funding and access to data from established businesses and the public sector.
Data-driven innovation is moving higher up the agenda in Europe with the European Commission committing more than 7 million euros (approx. $USD 7.5 million) to projects.
Innovation Ecosystem
Data Pitch will encourage established businesses and other organizations to share their information via a new secure data innovation lab. This data will be made available to startups. The big ambition is to create an innovation ecosystem where established enterprises work with smaller entities, using data to solve problems and create new products.
“Data Pitch will create a European ecosystem for data-driven innovation,” said Elena Simperl, Professor of Computer Science in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton and Data Pitch Project Director.
“In the digital age, every organization, public or private, big or small, generates and owns substantial data assets. Not all them have the opportunity to use this data effectively.
“With Data Pitch we take an established open innovation model and apply it at European scale – we pair some of the most creative entrepreneurial minds in 28 countries and help them to solve data challenges that matter – for the economy, for the environment, for science, and for society as a whole.”
For more information about Data Pitch, click here.