European Innovation Summit, Brussels
November 2017
EU TOP 50
STARTUPS
Bertrand
Piccard’s
1000
solutions
startup.ieee.org
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IDEAS
INNOVATION
INSPIRATION
Engineering-driven startups community
Innovators Magazine is
delighted to be part of the
European Innovation Summit’s
inaugural EU Top 50 (EU50)
Startups platform.
Summit organisers,
Knowledge4Innovation,(K4I),
launched EU50 this
year, in partnership with
IncubatorEurope and Glowfly.
The millennial startup
competition has attracted
game-changers from
across the continent; young
companies which K4I Managing
Director, Dr Roland Strauss,
said are ‘leveraging technology
to build disruptive solutions
that meet Europe’s most
pressing challenges’.
All 50 are showcased in this
special edition, which also
features an exclusive interview
with Bertrand Piccard, the
record-breaking Swiss pioneer
who has a rather impressive
resume when it comes to
bringing disruptive solutions
to the world. He is also the
keynote speaker at the EU50
Startups Convention, being
held as part of the Summit
programme.
Writing about the support
startups can access via the
European Innovation Council
(EIC), European Commissioner
for Research, Science and
�Innovation, Carlos Moedas,
gives context to the strategies
underpinning the continent’s
powerful startup ecosystem.
Enjoy the Summit.
Iain Robertson
Editor
Welcome
Contents
Welcome
1000 solutions
EU50
Supporting the next generation
of game-changers
Bertrand Piccard is heading
around the world with
a catalogue of solutions
Europe’s startups pioneer
disruptive solutions
WELCOME & CONTENTS
Editor | Iain Robertson
Partnerships | Susan Robertson
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Design | Blair Carrick, Ian Monk
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22
‘Game-changer
for our game-changers’
“Europe has a
unique chance
to become a
global leader
in innovation
provided we start
doing what we
were talking about for years:
making innovation the top priority,
facilitating open access to our
broad knowledge base, exploiting
the potential of synergies, allowing
entrepreneurs to take risk, fail
and start again, finding ways to
sustain growth of high potentials
to become global market leaders.”
Roland Strauss, Managing
Director, Knowledge 4 Innovation
33
Europe is strong in many areas
crucial to our ability to succeed in
this emerging future: world class
science, an abundance of talent
and ideas, openness and diversity,
strong industrial capabilities and a
collaborative and multi-disciplinary
approach to research, development
and innovation.
But too few innovative firms in Europe
succeed in scaling up to become
major employers and market leaders.
Many startups don’t make it beyond
the critical first few years, can’t get
the finance to scale up into global
businesses, or they try their luck in a
third country.
Our €77 billion Horizon 2020
programme is making impressive
strides in coupling excellent research
with innovation. But I believe there
is still more we can do to generate
greater impact from taxpayers’
investment. We need to make
reforms so that we support our top
innovators who have the ambition,
resilience and capability to create and
capture new markets. This is where
the European Innovation Council (EIC)
comes in, as a means of streamlining
EU level funding with a clear focus on
supporting breakthrough, market-
creating innovation and boosting
the effectiveness of the innovation
ecosystem.
The €2.7 billion first phase of the EIC
which we have just launched, focuses
on support for innovative firms and
entrepreneurs with the potential to
scale up their businesses rapidly at
the European and global levels. A
main feature is a fully bottom-up SME
instrument allowing applicants freedom
from thematic restrictions, a proposal
evaluation system that introduces for
the first time face to face interviews
with a jury of innovation and finance
experts and enhanced coaching and
mentoring support. Blended finance
(grants combined with loans) will also
be trialled.
I am confident that the EIC will provide
an excellent opportunity for all the
startups that are participating in the
EU Top 50 startups competition and
that it will become a ‘game-changer
for our game-changers’. I’m sure this
year’s European Innovation Summit
will again contribute to the on-going
discussions that shape our European
research and innovation landscape.
Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation
Bertrand Piccard is taking a selfie during his flight in Solar Impulse © Solar Impulse | Bertrand Piccard
By Iain Robertson
Solar Impulse 2 overflying the pyramids in Egypt © Solar Impulse | Revillard | Rezo.ch
FLY
FOREVER
ertrand Piccard says
startups must prioritise good
communication if they want
to push their innovations to market.
Speaking to Innovators Magazine
for this special edition showcasing
the European Innovation Summit’s
inaugural EU Top 50 Startups
event, where he is giving the
keynote speech, the ‘serial pioneer’
has a clear message to the young
innovators taking part: ‘success will
come from good communication.’
Words of advice from a man
with a strong record of doing
just that, and with real impact.
In 2016, Bertrand successfully
communicated the epic potential of
clean technologies, when he piloted
the first ever round-the-world solar
flight, alongside co-pilot André
Borschberg, in the history-making
Solar Impulse plane.
“The Solar Impulse flight showed
the world that it is possible to
push the limits of technology in
order to build the foundation for
a sustainable future,” said Ban
Ki-moon, who was then United
Nations Secretary-General.
1000 solutions
And now Bertrand is heading
around the world again – this
time with 1000 solutions that can
‘protect the environment in a
profitable way’.
Launched at this month’s UN
Climate Change Conference
(COP23) in Bonn - via the Solar
Impulse Foundation, which
Bertrand is the Initiator and
Chairman of, the World Alliance for
Efficient Solutions (World Alliance)
will select and promote 1000
solutions that can help contribute
to international climate targets.
“I want to select the best 1000
solutions and go around the world
again - not with a solar plane but
with a catalogue of solutions. I
want to take them to governments,
heads of state, to parliamentarians
who have to make legislation, and
to institutions and big corporations.
It will show them what exists today
and make clear they can be much
more ambitious in the targets they
want to reach,” Bertrand said.
To do this effectively, he will
communicate to decision-makers,
in governments and industry, in
a language they can understand,
which is simply that profit and
ecology go hand-in-hand.
“Heads of state all tell me that
the main problem is inertia; the
difficulty to move things. And that
ecology isn’t enough, as you have
too much resistance from industry.”
He continued: “What you need is
to have the politicians owning the
solutions, so they know which are
the best solutions for their country;
what is profitable, what can create
jobs, and then they can incorporate
it into their political programme.
They are then in a position to
say - look, we are going to do this
because it will create jobs, it will
make profit, it will sustain growth.”
“Even for climate change deniers,
it will be logical to use these
solutions,” Bertrand added.
And it is this criteria, the
combination of economy and
ecology, that an expert panel
will use to rigorously assess the
“You innovate when
you understand the
paradigm that prevents
you from moving
ahead, and you get rid
of this paradigm.”
Bertrand Piccard © Solar Impulse Revillard Rezo.ch
© Solar Impulse Revillard | Rezo.ch
suitability of each solution.
“I want to bring key people together,
into the World Alliance: startups,
companies, institutions and
organisations that are producing,
implementing or supporting the use
of clean technologies, and offer
them – free of charge – access to
these independent experts – who
give credibility to each solution,” he
said.
Solutions Bertrand says already
exist.
“I think there are a lot of people
everywhere in the world; in startups,
in universities, in research labs and
even big corporations, with one or
several solutions that are profitable
and can protect the environment,
but they are not known about,
people have no idea that they exist.”
All 1000 will be presented at COP24
in Poland next year.
European
startups show
the way
A number of game-changing
innovations stemming from
European startups have caught
Bertrand’s eye in recent weeks.
“One startup in Europe has
invented a system of solar cells,
to simultaneously produce heat
and electricity,” he said. “Until now
you had only thermal solar, or
photovoltaic solar, and it combines
the two; so on the same surface you
can produce heat and electricity.”
Another young company which
impressed him, is advancing a
product within the rapidly growing
electric vehicle market.
Bertrand continued: “This company
has invented an additional power
unit that you hook to your electric
car, that allows you to travel an
additional 600km. And you rent it,
you don’t need to buy it. So you can
have your little electric car for the
city, which you use during the week,
then at the weekend - when you
want to go on a break - you rent the
little trailer to give you the additional
range you need for your electric car.
This is really interesting.”
Creating amazing products is
only one part of the equation
though, their value must also be
properly communicated to the right
audiences.
“What I want to say to the startups,
all the people gathered for the EU
Top 50, all the innovators – they
have to work on the political level,
they have to promote themselves,
they have to speak of profit, not only
ecology,” Bertrand said.
“And we need to help them
market themselves better. This is
what people miss when they are
innovators, the marketing part. They
are very good scientifically but they
don’t know how to communicate.
And today lots of the success will
come from communication. By
becoming better known, better
respected; they can bring their
solutions to the market. This is
where the World Alliance can help
them because all our strike force is
in communication; it is in the media;
it is in the relationships we have with
governments.”
Think differently
And on a personal level, Bertrand
added that those who want to
help accelerate the shift to a
sustainable world, have to find ways
of approaching challenges from
different angles.
“What we have to do is to learn to
think differently,” he said. “I believe
that we have to understand that, as
human beings - or even companies,
we are prisoners of what we have
learned to do. We are prisoners
of our habits, prisoners of the
paradigms that we believe are so
strong and important.”
To break free of these shackles,
Bertrand urges innovators to ditch
paradigms that stop them moving
forward.
“For me innovation is not when
you have a new idea. Innovation is
when you get rid of all substitutes,
all beliefs, and this is how you can
innovate. You don’t innovate with a
new idea, you innovate when you
understand the paradigm that
prevents you from moving ahead,
and you get rid of this paradigm.”
He added: “When I initiated Solar
Impulse, the paradigm was that
you can never fly longer than the
20 days that I did with my balloon
around the world, because after 20
days – which was a long flight – you
have no fuel, so you cannot continue.
So you think ‘OK we can never
progress, we can never get better’
but that’s wrong. The paradigm is
you have the fuel and you fly as long
as you have the fuel. So to change
the paradigm you need to stop
having fuel. And Solar Impulse is a
plane that changed the paradigm
and flew with no fuel, and could
actually fly forever.”
Roland Strauss (K4I) and Bertrand Piccard at COP23, Bonn
A GLOBAL STRIKE FORCE...
Bringing together members in the
field of clean technologies to create
synergies, facilitate matchmaking
between solution providers and
investors, and showcase clean
and profitable solutions that have
the potential to address today’s
environmental challenges.
TO EMPOWER EFFICIENT SOLUTIONS
From federating to appraising: the
World Alliance assesses – entirely
free of charge – the deployability,
sustainability and viability of the
solutions submitted by its Members.
This assessment will guide the
selection of 1000 labelled Efficient
Solutions to bring to political and
corporate decision-makers, helping
them adopt more ambitious environ-
mental targets and energy policies.
The #1000solutions
Portfolio will be
presented during
COP24, in 2018
Thousands of solutions exist that can boost economic growth while preserving
nature, but they are hidden in start-ups or research labs, remain unknown to
decision makers and are not implemented at industry level. We need to embrace
clean technologies and efÏcient solutions and rethink the way we produce and
use energy in order to be logical, not just eco-logical.”
Dr. Bertrand Piccard, Initiator and Chairman of the Solar Impulse Foundation
Selecting #1000solutions
that protect the environment
in a profitable way.
“
SIGNUP.SOLARIMPULSE.COM
alliance@solarimpulse.com
EU TOP 50
START UPS