Data Pitch

Data Pitch is an open innovation programme bringing together corporate and public-sector organisations that have data with startups and SMEs that work with data.

Data Pitch was a three-year EU-funded open innovation programme that explored how data shared by organisations – from government bodies to multinational corporations – could be used by startups and innovators to tackle specific company and sector challenges, while generating direct benefit to them.

Data Pitch was developed to respond to the fact that there are many startups across Europe that are building innovative solutions using data and new technologies, yet they struggle to get access to real data from public and private sector organisations. Data Pitch bridges the gap between these two groups, supporting them throughout the process, removing risk and providing necessary expertise and credibility.

Data sharing was used to tackle 28 challenges, of which 22 found suitable startups to pair with. 112 additional jobs were created by Data Pitch startups and SMEs. €18 million in sales, investments and efficiencies was unlocked by accelerated startups and SMEs.

Data Pitch is not a Smart Data Scheme, but it is a successful example of a matchmaking innovation programme that spanned across multiple sectors. As mentioned in the section Develop and test in 'Growing the ecosystem', matchmaking programmes can help spur data innovation.

Businesses of various sizes can play different roles in these programmes, whether it is providing data to build services with potential partners such as SMEs, accessing data from other companies and industries, or testing new commercial models.

The example below shows how two different businesses, data provider Greiner and data user OBUU created value through a data sharing environment that can provide insights to smart data innovation.

By sharing with OBUU, Greiner is able to receive insights to improve inventory management that it was previously unable to. Explore the map here.

Key info

Description: Startups and SMEs were invited to propose solutions to a range of challenges in order to receive up to €100K equity-free funding, mentoring, business and data training, and marketing opportunities. Startups and SMEs could either apply to a Challenge set by a data provider, or apply to a sector challenge. Those applying to a sector challenge had to find and partner with a data provider by themselves.

Owner: The initiative was run by a consortium of the University of Southampton, ODI, Beta-i and Dawex

Sector: Cross-sector

Duration: 2017 - 2019

Cost: €2.75M for the delivery consortium; €4.89M funds for SMEs

Participants

47 Startups and SMEs

Data providers included organisations like Bloomberg and the Met Office

Data

The challenges focused on the use of shared data (so not open data, or data generated by the SME itself, though this may be used as part of the solution) from a wide range of data providers

Impact description

An external impact assessment found that during the Data Pitch programme, startups:

• Increased their sales by a mean of €36,554

• Received investments of a mean of €82,448

• Realised efficiencies of €17,168

• Increased their employment by an average of 2 employees.

On average, startups generated €599,432 in sales and €338,862 in investment per GB of data shared with them through Data Pitch.

Case study

The ODI Case Study on the overall Data Pitch programme provides an overview of the programme as well as some key facts and figures such as:

• Supported 47 startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from 13 different EU countries

• Worked with 11 data-holding corporate and public sector organisations that shared data with their startup partners

• Data sharing was used to tackle 28 challenges, of which 22 found suitable startups to pair with

• 112 additional jobs were created by Data Pitch startups and SMEs

• €18m in sales, investments and efficiencies was unlocked by accelerated startups and SMEs.

The ODI Case Study on the Greiner-OBUU collaboration, data provider Greiner shares how working with startup OBUU helped them identify a potential reduction of fixed asset investment of around 35%, resulting in a significant cost saving