re_source is the digital open innovation program by Sociedade Ponto Verde, focused on circular economy and digital disruption of packaging waste.
Being a Portuguese waste packaging management body whose mission is to manage the “take-back and recovery” of packaging, Sociedade Ponto Verde has brought re_source, in partnership with Beta-i, to bring new insights, technologies and scalable innovations to the packaging waste sector.
re_source is the way for international startups and innovators to develop, together and in collaboration with the pilot partners, the most innovative solutions to address challenges in this industry.
And who are these brave partners with whom the startups will work with, you ask? We answer – and you may find more about them in re_source’s website.
We have already 13 green rockstars in the source of innovation:
(re_source can still have more, though. If you’d like to join as a pilot partner, contact the team here)
The Municipality of Mafra mission is to plan, organise and implement policies that promote inclusive, smart and environmentally sustainable growth of the territory. The idea is to boost innovation and digital transformation, aimed at creating well-being for the citizens and generating value for investors.
Cascais Ambiente Cascais Ambiente is responsible for the urban cleaning and waste collection services in Cascais and is responsible for managing urban green public spaces, gambling and recreation, natural resource management and the coastline. https://ambiente.cascais.pt/
Manufactures recycled paper for corrugated cardboard. It has four lines of business: manufacturing of recycled paper for corrugated paper (Saica Paper), waste management and environmental services (Saica Natur), production of corrugated paper packaging (Saica Pack) and flexible packaging (Saica Flex).
Mail delivery service, both physically and digitally. Also includes services such as savings management, credits and insurance. Its mission is to foster innovation and forge relationships built on trust, through proximity and excellence, connecting both people and companies.
Manages, recovers, and treats the municipal waste produced in eight municipalities of the Greater Porto Area, in Portugal. Every year, it treats around 500,000 tons of municipal waste, promoting the adoption of integrated systems and the minimization of waste disposal in landfills. Four core areas of strategy: Multi-material Recovery, Organic Recovery, and Energy Recovery.
Leader in the production and commercialisation of disposable aluminium packaging for more than 40 years. Develops its activity in: cash & carries, food industry, patisseries/bakeries, catering and take away industries, including stores and supermarket chains.
Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation, present for over 150 years now. Nestlé unlocks the power of food to enhance the quality of life for everyone, today and for generations to come.
Urban hotel with a sustainable tourism concept, certified according to standards ISO 9001, 14001, and 45001, and the Green Key certification. Open since 2011, it has also won the We Care and We Share seals from the AHP, the Green Project Award, and the Zero Carbon Certification.
Projects, produces and commercializes a complete set of solutions for temporary waste containerization and related services. As the Iberian market leader of recycling containers, it has approximately 200 thousand units of its star product, CYCLEA, installed.
Founded in 1934 as a major beer seller company. Nowadays part of the Heineken company, SCC is a leading company in terms of innovation in the drinks market, and aware of its potential as a driving force for growth and development.
Major Portuguese soft drinks company with a multi-brand, multi-market strategy, whose core business is based on its operations in the Beer and Bottled water businesses. Includes soft drinks, wines, malt production and marketing and tourism.
Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) company. Responsible for integrated management of municipal solid waste produced in the municipalities of Cascais, Mafra, Oeiras and Sintra, in Portugal.
Vidrala (founded in 1965) produces glass containers for a wide range of food and beverage products. It is the 4th largest manufacturer in Western Europe, with eight complementary production centers located in different countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy and UK) and around 3500 employees.
It’s very exciting to have all these pilot partners on board.
The selected startups and innovators will be able to work together with a varied range of experts to disrupt the packaging waste system. Startups and innovators can apply to re_source until May 16, 2021.
Now in its fourth edition, The Journey returns to help disrupt the tourism industry, especially in demanding and urgent times like 2021.
The Journey – innovation for tourism
As every sector, Tourism has always had to adapt to external variables. The year of 2020 in particular, due to the covid-19 pandemic, has proven that adapting to challenges is key for the success and sustainability of the whole sector.
Taking Portugal’s case, tourism represents the sector with the largest economic export activity in the country – accounting in 2019 for 52.3% of services exports and 19.7% of the total exports, and tourism revenues contributing 8.7% to the Portuguese GDP. This reveals its innovation and strategy to be even more crucial.
Following the lead, The Journey program rises once again to its fourth edition, to find the most innovative solutions for the sector, focusing on its recovery and revamping.
This edition is 100% online, yet gathering international startups and the program’s partners to collaborate together into developing pilot projects that will be all about rapid test and implementation. These Pilots should be solving challenges felt in Hospitality, Parks & Monuments, Tours & Activities and Payments. This means that startups from all industries can take part in this innovation journey, given that the most varied technology will be creating positive impact.
The good news is that the Top 14 startups were already chosen for the bootcamp, where they will explore and establish pilot projects between them and partners. Here are the mighty fourteen:
The google analytics for the physical world. Enables brick & mortar chains to make decisions based on the movement, behavior and interests of millions of people.
Order-and-pay solution for the hospitality industry. Restaurants, Pubs, Hotels, Arenas, and Resorts are made more efficient, while their guests are kept safe and secure.
Digitalize in-person transactions for verticals such as hospitality, health care, retail, access control and ticket vending solutions for attended and self-service transactions.
After agreeing on a fit and work plan, startups and partners will be collaborating together. We’re looking forward to sharing some of those collaboration results in the near future.
Beta-i carried out an Ecosystem Survey to understand the evolution of the innovation market over the past 12 months among players in Portugal’s tech community.
The survey’s results show a growth in innovation and digital transformation projects during the pandemic.
One year after the beginning of the pandemic, these were the main takeaways:
71% of respondents say that the number of innovation projects developed between startups, companies, universities, and research centres has increased between March 2020 and March 2021;
50% show an increase in their number of innovation partners to find new solutions to the pandemic’s challenges;
47% of respondents give greater preference to seeking local partners rather than entities outside of Portugal;
Collaboration has also gained new strength, with over 70% of the community upholding the growth of this belief;
Innovation and digital transformation as agents of change increased 47%;
52% of the respondents’ optimism about the future remains similar to the pre-pandemic period, being a more skeptical or pragmatic stance based on issues that go beyond the pandemic context – such as diversifying innovation funding models and reducing bureaucracy and public procurement rules;
At Beta-i, we also saw our number of projects increase compared between March 2020 (15) and March 2021 (22 projects) and a 22% revenue growth in the first quarter of 2021 compared to 2020.
Alisson Avila, our co-founder and Communication and Knowledge Expert, explained that “the survey was conducted with people who work with innovation and digital transformation, during a year where this was paramount. A year later, this 12 month survey was undoubtedly crucial for the ecosystem to understand the way it deals with uncertain environments and, above all, rethink the way it approaches innovation.”
“However, we must understand the context of the data before assuming a positive correlation. The results show a solid upcoming scenario at a digital level; nevertheless, it may not represent higher revenue generation. It will be essential to align this through 2021, to confirm the trend that collaboration for innovation is a culture and process for generating results in the market,” adds Alisson.
The survey had the participation of 54 players from the technology community, including founders of startups, leaders, large companies’ executives, researchers, and investors, mostly of Portuguese nationality. The answers were collected between February and March, 2021.
By the end of 2020, Beta-i has made what most of us do when the year reaches its end: a retrospective and look into the future. We have reached some conclusions and made sure our clients, the ones that accompanied us throughout the unusual months of 2020, knew what those were.
Together we proved that collaboration is crucial, intrinsic and the key to solve every challenge.
During the last year, Beta-i has emerged with a new brand and the statement of collaboration above it all. We embraced even more what we already knew: we are what we share.
That is why we decided to share with our clients more pieces of knowledge for them to enjoy. With the help of Yomu Books, we’ve delivered 156 books to 97 clients in 13 countries.
With one condition: the sharing must go on. These books must be shared among the teams, so that knowledge can keep on spreading. All 97 companies have received at least one of these books, that must change hands once read:
Freaknomics by Steven D. Levitt
Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
We hope that this was the beginning of a journey of knowledge for 2021. Keep on sharing!
Portugal takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union next January with several challenges and opportunities, capable of making this six-month term a memorable season. Especially when it comes to common market’s digital legislation, the bustle is already guaranteed: it’s the temporary Portuguese leadership that will deal with the first developments towards the implementation of new rules replacing others created 20 years ago – that is, a near-eternity for the tech cluster. Formally presented this Tuesday (15), the Digital Services Act (DSA) intends to introduce new rules in areas ranging from content moderation, online advertising and algorithms configuration transparency, while the Digital Markets Act (DMA) intends to anticipate potential illegal practices and provide an audit tool for companies that have more than 10% of the market within the common economic space. Both propositions can be checked on the European Council’s website official announcement.
DSA announcement landing page
It has been known since before her inauguration, that the current President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wishes to modernize the digital legislation of the common market. Something that was crystal clear, for example, in her recent opening speech at Web Summit 2020 – a definitely global event, but whose opening narrative was decisively European. Ambitiously, the German politician opened the world’s largest technological meeting by recognizing there are still many obstacles to digital entrepreneurship in the European Union and many startups end up leaving the European space to ensure their growth. For this reason, she reiterated three fundamentals of change that, in her understanding, will make the EU the global leader in digital excellence in the “20s” that are coming. Such pillars affirm that the (European) practices and values of the offline world must also be respected online; that companies must have a unique set of fundamental digital rules across the European Union; and that they must have equal conditions and opportunities.
All of these principles are reflected in the brand-new proposed legislation. DSA aims to strengthen the EU’s single market, facilitate the expansion of startups and scale-ups through unifying rules in the economic space and clarify the responsibilities and obligations of digital services, while DMA will directly address the economic power of major online platforms with the intention of restraining (and demanding) certain behaviours, even before regulators have evidence of real damage to the market.
The proposals point to unquestionable benefits for society and democracy in Europe (reduction of fake news, illegal products and services and hate speech), but it is too early to know what their systemic implications will be on people’s daily lives and, above all, on businesses’. These are epic challenges in political, legal and geocorporate terms, capable of generating an impact both in large technological companies and in early-stage startups.
Although the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, stated (also) at the Web Summit 2020 that this debate “is not about where you come from, but about what you do and the role you have in the market”, the potentially geopolitical discussion it’s already set. The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), positioned at the top of the North American ranking of the Global Go To Think Tank Index, published last November the study “Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act and the new competition tool – European initiatives to face US technology companies“, whose approach highlights how the different international perspectives and interests on the subject will be heard with a huge echo while Portugal leads the temporary presidency of the European Council.
CSIS (left) and Oxera / Allied for Startups (right) studies
On the other hand, the study “The Impact of the Digital Services Act on business users”, released last October by the British consultant company Oxera in partnership with the international association Allied for Startups, suggests another angle: that the emerging digital entrepreneurs in Europe have a vision on defending their autonomy and free initiative similar to that of North American big techs. After collecting the perspective of 1,000 startup & SME founders from the travel and tourism, gig economy and creative industry segments in Germany, Bulgaria, Ireland and Spain, the study concludes that DSA can achieve positive results if 1) it continues to limit the platforms’ direct responsibility for content and products made available by third parties; 2) it allows platforms to take their own voluntary actions to detect harmful or illegal content; 3) it elaborates obligations with known penalties, in order to increase customer confidence and provide legal certainty; 4) it expands the consistency of rules applied across the EU; 5) it avoids overloading discouraging information to users, such as detailed verification of product lists, qualifications or content copyrights; 6) it doesn’t prescribe governance solutions that prevent platforms from implementing scalable technical solutions, such as artificial intelligence tools; and 7) it avoids rules based on the size of each platform, such as numbers of users or the value of facilitated transactions.
These are perspectives both legitimate and potentially fracturing when facing the Council of the EU intentions, ready to feed a lively debate right at the moment of Portugal’s protagonism in its rotating presidency. So the question emerges: how will the well-known Portuguese pro-innovation and digital transformation position, expressed so favourably over the past few years, be used as a parameter in the legislative developments of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act? A theme that we’ll closely follow-up throughout 2021.
* Beta-i’s Co-Founder, Communication & Knowledge Principal
The Lisbon Tourism Summit (LTS), organized by Beta-i and sponsored by Turismo de Portugal, will take place on Sep 30th and goes fully online. The 2020 edition focuses on a more sustainable approach on the tourism sector, “a segment that more than ever requires deepening in strategic themes such as circular economy, mobility, artificial intelligence and energy efficiency so that it is possible to actually talk about sustainability“, emphasizes Gonçalo Faria, one of Beta-i’s Innovation Programs director.
LTS counts on the participation of several national and international speakers, with the emphasis on the sustainability designer, sociologist and businesswoman, Leyla Acaroglu. Awarded as Champion of the Earth by the United Nations, Leyla is also author of several books and TED Talks. Check what she has to say as, in her own words, a sustainability provocateur:
The Lisbon Tourism Summit is an integral part of Turismo de Portugal’s innovation strategy to manage the growth of this industry in the country over the past few years. Beta-i is a strategic partner in this because, in addition to LTS, it also organizes The Journey – an open innovation program that facilitates collaboration between leading companies in the tourism industry (such as Grupo Barraqueiro, Vila Galé, Parques de Sintra – Monte da Lua and Unicre) with technological solutions from startups around the world. The results of its latest edition will be presented within the LTS: there will be more than a dozen project presentations, involving startups from Europe and Asia.
