Business Meets Innovation (BMI), the start-up contest of the German-Italian Chamber of Commerce in which Techinnova and its acceleration programme Innogrow are partners, has officially begun.

Now in its fourth edition, the objective of Business Meets Innovation is to encourage the matching between the demand for innovation of top players in the Italian-German business community and the offer of innovative solutions by Italian start-ups.

The contest is open to all start-ups, spin-offs, research groups and innovative SMEs located in Italy and participation is free of charge. This year, four technology challenges have been launched by the top players Boehringer Ingelheim, Robert Bosch and Siemens, who have decided to focus on the innovative contribution of a start-up for the development and implementation of strategic initiatives for their business.

The technology challenges deal with different topics: from the creation of a portal for personalised communication between the company and its customers (Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health – BI Round X project) to measuring the ecological footprint (Robert Bosch – The Carbon Footprint Social Network project); from processing the data of a particular business segmentation (Boehringer Ingelheim – Close the data gap project) to monitoring the energy consumption of real estate units (Siemens – Your Personal Energy Consultant project).

During the application period, candidates will have the exclusive opportunity to participate in two webinars (one at the end of July and one at the end of September) – which can be accessed by registering for the contest – during which they will be able to meet directly with the project managers of all the top players, in order to clarify doubts and technical details before presenting their innovative idea.

Until 10 October, start-ups, spin-offs, innovative SMEs and researchers can apply for one or more projects by proposing their own solution, thus competing both for victory in the relevant project and for the title of Overall Winner of the initiative.

Detailed descriptions of the four technology challenges launched by the three German multinationals and registration for the project presentation event are available on the website.

To register for the contest, please fill in the following form.