Contest aims to find a Marine Mastermind
Aimed at start-up companies and entrepreneurs, the purpose of the Wärtsilä Marine Mastermind innovation contest is to find new and unique digital services for the marine industry.
It’s being launched in conjunction with Slush. Organized by a community of entrepreneurs, investors, students and music festival organizers, this non-profit event will be held in Helsinki, Finland, November 11-12 as a focal point for startups and tech talent to meet with top-tier international investors, executives and media. In 2014, it brought together over 14.000 attendees and more than 3,500 companies, with more than 750 investors coming to Helsinki to meet startups in nearly 3,800 pre-booked meetings.
Wärtsilä’s contest is open to existing companies as well as to aspiring entrepreneurs. The winner will get to further develop the idea together with Wärtsilä’s experts and Shift Actions, which specializes in agile concept and product development.
Wärtsilä is holding the contest to build closer relationships with international start-up companies and entrepreneurs and discover interesting digital business opportunities together. The aim is to develop a new value adding digital service or solution in collaboration with start-ups to support the growth of Wärtsilä’s customers’ business. The winner also gets a chance to become part of the highly international marine business.
“We are living in the age of disruptive innovations. This applies also to our business. Start-ups are playing a vital role in this,” says Pierpaolo Barbone, President of Wärtsilä Services.
“The marine industry provides an enormous amount of possibilities for new product and service innovations. Already today Wärtsilä’s innovations increase the predictability of maintenance requirements, optimise the use of vessels’ equipment and even enable the utilization of virtual reality in remote support. The innovations we are looking for in the contest can for instance bring efficiency gains, better usability, improve transparency of operations to the customer or enhance safety. Only the imagination is the limit,” comments Tero Hottinen, General Manager, Business Innovation at Wärtsilä Services.
The contest kicks off today, with information now available HERE.
Wärtsilä begin accepting submissions for the contest after a presentation at the Slush Clean Solutions event in Helsinki November 12.
Submissions can be sent to Wärtsilä by 31 December 2015. The winner of the contest will be chosen by an international jury established by Wärtsilä.
The best ideas will be showcased to the jury in February. The winner will be announced in March 2016.
What’s in it for the winner? A 30-day agile “Lean Innovation Lab” product or service development sprint supported by business coaching specialist Shift Actions that will focus on the challenges of innovation, development of the concept for commercialization, its prototyping as well as the business plan and its implementation plan. The goal is to then use the concrete idea together with Wärtsilä.
Submissions can be sent to Wärtsilä by December 3, 2015. The winner of the contest will be chosen by an international jury. The best ideas will be showcased to the jury in February.
The winner will be announced in March 2016.