Bluetech Accelerator – Ports and Shipping 4.0 just wrapped-up its Bootcamp phase. Bluetech is an ambitious and innovative program looking to create a new batch of ocean startups and attracted startups from all over the world.
The Bootcamp
The Bootcamp, that occurred from 24th to 28th, is an intensive work week where startups and met for the first time with the partners.
The week started with a speech from Ana Paula Vitorino, the portuguese Ministry of the Sea, who inspired the entrepreneurs with the government’s vision of developing a new blue economy, that both uses ocean resources and protects its biodiversity and sustainability.
After the first introductions, the startups received guidance from Beta-i’s team on how to build pilots in collaboration with the partners and spent their time meeting one-on-one with the partners.
This is an essential moment, where startups can dive into the partner’s business and discuss to find common goals and operations.
The Pilots Moving Forward
Of the 21 startups that joined the pilot, 15 have been chosen to move on to the pilot phase. They will be developing 23 pilots in partnership with the Bluetech Pioneers.
APDL, who administers the ports in the north of Portugal will be leading in the number of pilots – having 7 pilots being developed with several startups, followed by APS (ports in the south), with 5 pilots. These numbers clearly reflect the vertical being developed in this first edition – Ports and Shipping.
Starting next Monday, June 21st, 21 startups will be joining us at Beta-i for the Bluetech Bootcamp. The Bootcamp is an amazing opportunity to spend a week liaising with the program partners – getting to know them and their business, find common values, explore possibilities and co-create a mutually beneficial pilot.
Understand the bootcamp
The bootcamp is an essential part of any open-innovation program. In this stage, startups and partners meet in person for the first time, and will dedicate their time to know each other’s business and work together. It’s essential to go through the agenda and be ready for the different parts of the schedule in order to not miss opportunities!
Research the partners
If you applied to the program, you probably have a particular interest in working with one (or more) of the partners. It’s important to research the partners, and know as much as possible about their business, so you can take your one-on-one time to the next level, by asking all the right questions.
Be ready to learn on the workshops
On Bluetech Accelerator’s bootcamp, you’ll have the chance to attend workshops with Beta-i’s open-innovation specialists and learn how to build your pilot case. This is an essential skill in order to advance to the next stage of the program. It’s also an opportunity to share your concerns and doubts with skilled and experienced facilitators and ask for advice – they have done this before!
Take advantage of one-on-one meetings
The one-on-one meetings with the partners are extremely valuable for startups. Here, you can deepen your knowledge about the partners’ business, get a better sense of how you can help their business, and also to figure out any technical ou specific questions about the application of your solution. Also, be ready to present your business from different perspectives, tailored to each partners’ business.
Co-create the pilots
Now that you’ve learned how to build a pilot and that you know the partners well, it’s time to build your pilot proposal. Understand that the value is in the collaboration: take advantage of all moments with partners and other startups to share information and build the pilots together – making them more likely to be fulfilling or everybody’s goals and expectations.
Network
Not everything is work, but almost! Downtime, like coffee breaks and cocktails are a perfect time to wind down, and get to know everyone personally. Connect with other successful startups and
leaders that are disrupting the Ports and Shipping industry – and keep yourself open to opportunities.
Make arrangements beforehand
Now that you’ve looked at the schedule and prepared for the bootcamp’s activities, make all your arrangements beforehand! The bootcamp has an action-packed schedule that will require your focus in order to make the best of it. So, it’s better to make all logistical arrangements – travelling, accommodation, an even have business engagements – beforehand.
Enjoy Lisbon
Take advantage of our beautiful city, its beach, culture and food – you won’t regret it! Take a look at the handy city guide our team always sends to bootcamp participants!
Bluetech Accelerator – Ports and Shipping 4.0 will have its Bootcamp phase between 24th-28th June. Bluetech is an ambitious and innovative program looking to create a new batch of ocean startups and attracted startups from all over the world.
The Bootcamp
The top startups were invited to join the one-week Bootcamp. In this week, they will benefit from learning about business model innovation, startup methodologies and tools, get additional product validation, define the value proposition and a business case to present to the Partners. The best startups will have the opportunity to work together with one or more Partners in developing a pilot.
The New Wave of Ocean Startups
The program received a total of 87 applications, from 29 different countries. Here are the startups joining the Bootcamp (click on the buttons to know more about them):
ECO WAVE POWER
Country: Israel Areas of Interest: Energy & Cleantech, Renewable Energy, Green Technology, Green Energy.
Eco Wave Power is an advanced and innovative international wave power developer headquartered in Israel.
Country: United Kingdom Areas of Interest: Logistics/Supply Chain, Shipping
ARX Maritime mission is to bring cutting-edge solutions and hardware to the forefront of your maritime operations. Our goal is to equip you with cost-effective solutions that give you more efficient operations and a safer and more secure environment to work in.
Country: Portugal Areas of Interest: Transportation, Logistics/Supply Chain, Data & Analytics, Shipping
eShip applies state-of-the-art ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to the traditional chartering business model, generating significant value added to all market participants
Country: Portugal Areas of Interest: Transportation, Logistics/Supply Chain, Logistics Marketplace
Bizcargo is a Future Cargo Logistics solution, acting as a marketplace, to search and compare transport and logistics services with simple or multimodal door-to-door solutions
Country: Ireland Areas of Interest: Data & Analytics, Sensors, Environmental Compliance
TechWorks Marine is a provider of oceanographic equipment and world-class solutions to monitor the marine environment, working in the private and public sectors both in Ireland and overseas
Country: Estonia Areas of Interest: SaaS, API, Logistics
Shipitwise created a tool which is not only able to digitize any offline, analog world transportation company, but also provide a professional system for logistics firms to share with their business customers.
Country: United States Areas of Interest: Energy & Cleantech, Oil & Gas, Wind Energy
Apellix designs and builds aerial robots (drones) that autonomously perform work on elevated structures that is otherwise dangerous, expensive and time-consuming for humans to perform.
Bluetech Accelerator had its Pitch Day selection during European Maritime Day, on the 16th and 17th of May.
This is the phase where partners get together to evaluate and choose the startups moving to the bootcamp phase. To help them selected they watch a 3 minute pitch from the startup (remote call or in presence), followed by a short Q&A. Thirty-seven startups were invited to pitch on this day.
This event was part of European Maritime Day, one of the biggest industry events for Europe, and was opened by Ana Paula Vitorino, Minister of the Sea of the Republic of Portugal, one of the entities behind Bluetech Accelerator.
A glimpse on what happened at #bluetechaccelerator during the Europe Maritime Day. The objective for the Online Pitch is to choose the startups joining the bootcamp. 🌊Get to know more about Bluetech Accelerator at http://bluetechaccelerator.com/
Publicado por Beta-i em Segunda-feira, 3 de junho de 2019
António Carvalho started his work in innovation when he joined Portugal Ventures – he is now leading Bluetech, the first Blue Economy accelerator backed by the Portuguese Ministry of the Sea.
With a background on Corporate Finance & Management, António first came in contact with innovation projects when he joined Portugal Ventures in 2012. Joining this ambitious project that aimed to launch a Startups ecosystem in Portugal that barely existed at that time, is still something he is proud of.
When he joined Beta-i, back in 2017, he took on the challenge of launching The Journey, an open-innovation program tackling the challenges of tourism, as he believed that innovating is the only way the main Tourism and Travel players can be consistently on the lead of the industry.
I’m one of those who believes Portugal can do way more to take advantage of its vast maritime border, so when the opportunity to launch a program in this field arrived, I just couldn’t say no.
When he was challenged to direct Bluetech program, he took the challenge head-on, as he believes there’s so much Portugal can do with its coast. Bluetech accelerator is an initiative of the Portuguese Ministry of the Sea and Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento (FLAD). They aligned the Portuguese Ocean Industry strategy with the interests of the six corporate partners. Which resulted in the definition of the challenges affecting Ports & Shipping 4.0 – which is the program’s first vertical. These challenges go from for Ports activity, Shipping operations and the Digital areas that connect both.
“After the needs assessment meetings with the corporate partners, four main challenges were defined: Process Optimization in Port Hinterland, which includes the concept of extended gateways, data analytics for complete vessel situational awareness and security profiling illicit activity at sea, etc; Cargo and Fleet Performance Management, which includes use of data to upgrade efficiency, use of digital twins, and product innovation; Future Shipping connectivity, which includes enabling ports to be connected and linked and creating new marketplaces; and Environmental Sustainability, challenging to reduce the environmental footprint of ports and vessels.”
Keeping these challenges in mind, the maritime industry is poised for change, and “Bluetech Accelerator can really change the industry by leveraging ocean science and R&D services for generating innovation and entrepreneurship. We can use ports as acceleration platforms for developing ocean advanced industries, integrated into global value chains, thus transforming the value matrix of Portugal’s ocean economy – and ultimately have an impact on the Portuguese economy.”
António believes that an open innovation program like this it the right way to kickstart this change, as it brings added value to all the intervenients: “The corporate partners are able to tap into the global source of innovation in their specific sector and test new disruptive solutions in collaboration with startups and other program partners. We’re actually seeing a budding capacity between the corporate partners themselves, using the program’s key moments to discuss the major innovation trends of the industry. As for startups, they get access to a group of experienced industry players, typically hard to reach, and the potential to test a solution with them and eventually get a partner that can give them easy access to the market and jumpstart their growth.”
It’s a huge opportunity for business – Ocean amounts for 97% of Portugal’s territory but only 3,1% of the gross value added
Startups, “who are looking forward to validating their product, experiment their product or solution with a big player of the industry and make it resonate with clients, it’s a huge opportunity – not only the program that allows them to strike a deal with a big client, that may get them access to a larger market, but the industry itself, as Venture Capital funds are investing heavily in Ports, Shipping and Logistics Digital startups – shipping and logistics startups focused on digital technology have risen $3.3 billion from January 2012 to September 2017.”
Portugal’s strategic guidelines will play into this investment boom, with a focus on strengthening traditional ocean economic activities (fishing, aquaculture and maritime transport), empowering emerging economic activities (like deep sea mining, biotechnology and ocean energy) and maximising Atlantic geostrategic centrality of the Portuguese Maritime space, in particular its deep and ultra-deep environments.
“It’s a huge opportunity for business – Ocean amounts for 97% of Portugal’s territory but only 3,1% of the gross value added”, concludes António.
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