Overview
On 18 May, Stuttgart hosted the KIS Mobile Convention, the second in a series of four KIS 100 Regional Events.
The „KIS Mobile Convention“ and the parallel EC workshop „Towards a European Partnership in support of satellite-enabled downstream services“ where hosted by the Ministry of Economy of Baden-Württemberg and MFG Baden-Württemberg for the European Commission and the experts that attended from all over Europe.
The „KIS Mobile Convention“ informed about 80 participants about service innovation in the Southwest of Germany, current trends in research and support measures as well as future perspectives in the mobile sector. Klaus Haasis (MFG Stuttgart) and Mette Quinn from the European Commission opened the day and both stressed the importance of collaboration between European regions in order to successfully drive the knowledge intensive services industries. SMEs from the region presented short videos on their service innovations in the mobile sector. The audience then voted for the best among them.
eFormic from Freiburg won the first price. „greenEye“ their service is aimed at tracking the sustainability of CO2-neutral products. By using a mobile phone, consumers can scan a special bar code on the product and receive information on the CO2 emissions of the particular item, as well as other measures the producers takes to reduce emissions.
Runner-up was texxmo with their portable computer systems and Bernot IT, an IT company active in geopraphical tracking, came in third.
In a discussion session titled „Towards an innovation ecosystem for mobile services” moderated by (EBN), experts like Carlo Donzella (MediaKIS), Matthias Holzner (MFG Baden-Württemberg), Dr. Gerhard Lörcher (Magic Maps), Hans Simons (NL Innovation) and Dr. Thomas Usländer (Fraunhofer-Institut für Optronik, Systemtechnik und Bildauswertung IOSB, System Technologies & Image Exploitation) and Moriz Vohrer (eFormic) discussed current technology trends and innovative business models.
Two main arguments that were discussed here. This were firstly, the fact that it is of greatest importance to link the development of services and underlying applications to the actual needs of the consumers. Too often technologies do not fulfil needs of the market and thus are not successful.
Secondly, the panellists discussed the importance of marketing versus business model. The final consensus was that if the business model is coherent and valid, marketing is only of secondary importance.
All videos from SMEs presenting at the „KIS Mobile Convention“can now be found on the MFG Youtube-Channel .
