Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - GateOne (GateOne - Innovation Service for European Smartization by SMEs)

Teaser

\"The digitization of society and the economy creates significant opportunities for European SMEs to exploit new markets. The market for hardware in the Internet of Things (IoT) is estimated to be worth 54B€. There is a new wave of innovation for which smart system...

Summary

\"The digitization of society and the economy creates significant opportunities for European SMEs to exploit new markets. The market for hardware in the Internet of Things (IoT) is estimated to be worth 54B€. There is a new wave of innovation for which smart system technology is the cornerstone and the adoption of smart systems will enable leadership.
Digitization is a business opportunity but also an innovation risk especially for SMEs. Investing in product development is by essence a high risk approach and thereforethe investment in radical or disruptive innovation is almost impossible for small companies.
To generate new smart products, the time to market becomes significantly shorter and a lot of enabling technologies to realise this are still in the lab. The European Commission has identified this strong need for the acceleration of smart systems adoption and has invested 25M€ among eleven countries in Innovation Actions for Smart Systems. The gateone-project is part of this initiative: \"\"Smart Anything Everywhere\"\" .

The goal of our action is to initiate the relationship between Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs) and SMEs to facilitate innovation access and to accelerate smart systems adoption by European SMEs. Our Innovation action aims to engage SMEs in a first evaluation of smart solution while reducing their innovation risk. In providing a demonstrator selected by SME for evaluation, the goal is to generate enough confidence in the technology and the market to move towards a more ambitious development of innovative and smart solutions.

The missions of the gateone project are:
• To demonstrate to European SMEs the capability of state-of-the-art smart-system technology as a mean for a sustainable differentiation;
• To generate innovation opportunities for SMEs while reducing and managing their investment risk;
• To generate a structured dialogue through concrete collaborations between the research community (research centers and academics) and SMEs.
 
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Work performed

The gateone-project commenced in January 2015.

A the end of 2016, a total of 34 demonstrator definitions have been completed in collaborations with SMEs and 22 demonstrators have been delivered while the others are still under development. At the end of March 2017 we will have reached the total of 48 demonstrators produced which is the initial goal of the project.

Thanks to a large traction campaign , 700 SMEs have been intervewed of whom more than 200 have expressed interest in the gateone concept and process. A total of 176 projects were discussed and lead to the 34 decisions of investment. 30 additional business cases are under assessment by our consortium.

Among the demonstrators delivered, a number of concepts have been introduced to customers and showcased during major fair trade events (Photonics 2016 or CES Las Vegas 2017)

In 2017, the gateone-project will have produced at least 45 demonstrators. In this last period our objective is to demonstrate the sustainability model of our action. In the Work Package 7, dedicated to the sustainability, we have studied potential future business models. During the last year of the gateone-project, we want to test this approach on a number of additional demonstrators.

Final results

The open innovation model of the gateone-project is well received by SMEs. Among the 700 SMEs directly contacted, around 50% expressed interest to enter into the open innovation approach of our action. We have generated a strong pipeline of opportunities for collaboration in multiple fields and what we have confirmed is that SMEs are ready to invest manpower in a true innovation opportunity when their financial risk can be managed with a first validation stage.
Among 200 companies in contact with the gateone-project team, 50% do not have activities related to Smart Systems. The adoption of smart systems will lead to potential new products and should be considered as radical change in their organization.

The 34 demonstrators in progress cover 10 different sectors where smartization addresses bankable challenges. The Medical, Agro-food, and Process control segments showed the strongest traction.

During these 2 years of activity, the gateone-project has generated momentum for a wider adoption of miniaturised smart systems in innovative and sustainable products, meeting industrial and end-users needs in a broad range of applications and sectors.

In order to have the best chances for SMEs to succeed beyond the gateone-project, we tend to work on the validation of the future procurement chain. We check the availability of critical components and also the level of competition in presence. The Innovation chain and the best practice for market exploitation are then a common ground for all the demonstrators. The gateone-project works on the industrial chain structuration to prepare a favorable environment for innovative product development.


The broad range of technologies in the portfolio have generated opportunities for innovation of various forms and with multiple impacts:
1- A new product when the selected technologies are at the core of innovation. The “new product” opportunity is especially true for system demonstrators.

2- New features in an existing product: The innovation is coming from the combination of 2 building blocks together, a mature technology combined with a new sensor which generates value to the user. We are in the core of the “smartization” concept.

3- Generation of new services, especially in the evolution of the business model in maintenance and servicing introducing predictive algorithms thanks to IoT.

4- A differentiation: advanced components are enabling miniaturization or integration which delivers differentiation to the adopter.

5- Support the emergence of new markets: Smart solutions can support a new offer to reach the minimum required specifications to find first market adoption. Delivering missing functions, the gateone-project can support the take-up of a new market.


The innovation opportunities are various in their nature but all converge on economic impact for the benefit of SMEs, and also on the global market.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.gateone-project.eu.