The year 2019 has been really productive for IMPACT Connected Car. We’ve travelled around the world, presenting our program during many of conferences. One of it was The European Cluster Conference, which took a place in Bucharest, Romania last May.

The European Cluster Conference is organised by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs together with Romania, under the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU.

One of the events of the conference was the Cluster Awards Ceremony. ICCar became the winner in the category INNOSUP-1 Cluster Project of the Year 2019! This award provided an opportunity for EU INNOSUP-1 cluster projects to showcase their efforts and for the European Union to reward the most successful collaboration between clusters across Europe. It was a great achievement!

To participate in this Award, each Cluster Project needed to prove their success stories, cooperation with a partnership, and other factors related to cluster collaboration. Thus, in this article we decided to share how we got to our biggest achievement!

• ICCar successfully managed 2 open calls with over 400 applicants. Now we have a portfolio of 60 companies and 31 of them will complete the full acceleration program. From the 1st open call we organised a 1st Disruptive Bootcamp (CTAG) in Vigo, Spain and it was a 3-day workshop where SMEs discovered the challenges and business niches from the large companies, with the support of ICCAR 17 powerful partners.
• We got big partnerships in the project: PSA Group and Ferrovial Servicios, as well as two “network” Corporates, Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile - FIA and the Fiware foundation. Besides we have a powerful network of over 30 supportive partners which includes corporates.
• ICCar participated in many corporate events, among them IMAGINE MOBILITY MEETINGS that took place on the 20th November 2018 in Paris, organized by MOV’EO. This matchmaking event gathered during one day more than 200 international companies. IMPACT Connected Car beneficiaries established there a first contact or took the opportunity of a follow-up session for already-established links.
• We organised our 1st Investor Forum, a side event celebrated within the FIWARE Summit in Málaga (Spain) that gave startups the opportunity to pitch their solutions to investors. This side event welcomed 13 investors who were eager to know 21 participating startups. In total 15 startups, including the 8 IMPACT Connected Car startups selected during the Jury Day took the stage to present their smart solutions.
• And we have many success stories from our SMEs to share:
• The positive collaboration between a beneficiary startup and one of the partners, facilitating the up-take of innovation, which is the pilot by Cardio ID & Ferrovial;
• Worldsensing was selected out of 500 applicants as one of the top 15 startups to enter the first batch awarded by IMPACT Connected Car. Within ICCar, they conducted a pilot project to validate the effect of an innovative parking enforcement feature which aims to increase the value of traditional Smart Parking solutions. Worldsensing used its existing dual-detection Smart Parking sensor, FastprkDuo, and added an “automatic parking enforcement feature”. Due to this add-on, parking operators can now monitor parking behavior in real time and act accordingly.

The 6th edition of Cluster Conference 2019 brought together 400 cluster policy-makers, cluster managers, practitioners and other stakeholders. It focused on topics such as digitalisation and skills gap, circular economy, shared value and social impact, and offered a unique opportunity to learn about recent and future priorities for cluster policies and developments to support an innovative, sustainable industrial modernisation and interregional cooperation. Impact Connected Car was active in the event: and our team participated in a panel discussion and made a presentation about our achievements (May 15th 2019).

ICCAR Community (with more than 850 members) leverages on a curated deal flow of connected mobility SMEs (+400) and sets the cornerstone for future collaboration thanks to gained recognition and reputation (new projects, including business relations).