London, December 16: NTT DATA UK held its Open Innovation Contest 10.0 at Level39 in Canary Wharf. Ten start-ups made it to the finalist stage of the competition with innovations across spanning industries from the insurance market, food technology, marketing and medical field.
NTT DATA UK’s Senior Vice President in Research and Development, Mark Masterson, says the Open Innovation Contest is different because it focuses on the Triple Win. The Triple Win “is a successful value proposition for us, for them and for our customers,” Masterson says, and the winners of the London competition will get focused support from NTT DATA. “We will be working with them over the course of next year trying to find ways for us all to profit from the value propositions that they have discovered.”
TellSpec’s Isabel Hoffman took home the Sustainable Development Goals Award for her pitch on the world’s first food scanner that knows what's in your food. “It’s like a lab in your pocket,” she says. The goal is to empower people to make healthier food choices. “I was not expecting to win but it very nice! We won this award, I think, because we want to change the world and make it much more sustainable,” says Hoffman.
The joint winners were Iotic with its digital twin technology and Digital Fineprint a data platform that builds company profiles and sell them as risk models to insurance companies. Digital Fineprint's founder Erik Abrahamson said on the win. “It’s amazing, I am so honoured and pleased. I am hoping this will be the first step in a much longer cooperation with NTT DATA.”
The announcement follows Unmanned Life and Anomalous being named regional winners for Scotland in Edinburgh on December 2nd. Unmanned Life provides autonomy as service while Anomalous specialises in using AI for manufacturing quality control.
The winners of both the London and Edinburgh events will travel to Tokyo in January to compete in the Grande Finale. “The winners of the contest they get to go to Japan at the end of January. They have to pitch again where they are competing against all of the winners from all of the cities around the world,” says Masterson.
The Grande Finale winner will receive investment worth up to $100,000 to support the development of their proposed new business.