Periodic Reporting for period 2 - STADIEM (Startup Driven Innovation in European Media)
Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2023-09-30
STADIEM built the first pan-European accelerator for the media sector. STADIEM boosts the opportunities and fosters the success of European media startups and scale-ups by the creation and deployment of cross border innovation to market startup growth via a 4-stage innovation program (including coaching, mentoring, showcasing) that engages leading European scale-ups and startups, media companies, innovation hubs and other actors such as investors, vc's and business/tech experts. STADIEM addresses successfully three key pain points in the European media sector: cross border scalability, startup to corporate to market tech transfer, and availability of innovative media services in a Digital Single Market framework. STADIEM breaks barriers in Europe and creates a strong community of sandboxes, accelerators, innovators, media companies, investors enabling stronger visibility and opportunities for startups and scale-ups active in the media industry. STADIEM made the European media sector stronger with the innovative solutions developed in the innovation program addressing key areas like content creation and distribution, data/AI/ML/synthethic tools for media, journalism 4.0 content verification and desinformation, archiving, monetisation and moonshots. The STADIEM consortium consists of 4 media innovations hubs in Europe - VRT Sandbox (Belgium) Media City Bergen (Norway), NMA.vc (Germany) and Storytek (Estonia), reinforced by 3 strong players in community building (European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Open Call management (F6S) and outreach creation (MARTEL Innovate.
STADIEM has organised two open calls with 299 eligible applications over both calls and selected 81 promising startups and scale-ups that entered in two cohorts (41 cohort one, 40 cohort 2) of the 4 phase STADIEM program with cascade funding. As outcome of the two Match Phases where relevant start-ups and scale-ups from STADIEM were matched with European companies, 75 innovative projects between European start-ups and scale-ups and media companies were proposed, 32 (2x 16) of them were selected to enter the two Develop Phase to develop with support of the corporate the innovative solution, 22 (2x11) were selected to join the Integrate Phase to integrate the solution and pre-test it (including technologies, business processes, ..) and finally 10 were selected to publicly pilot (1x 4; 1x 6) the solution with the corporate. In total 3.6 million € of third-party support funding was distributed to the beneficiaries, with a beneficiary reaching the pilot stage receiving a maximum grant of 155.000€.
In order inform, activate and engage the European media-ecosystem around the four hubs, the open calls and the STADIEM Innovation program, a community building strategy was executed, including showcasing the STADIEM solutions and program at 26 major international media conferences (IBC, Slush, Big Score, Future Week, Latitude59, ...) to different stakeholders via STADIEM events, boots, workshops or participation in events of other networks (FMH event Slush and SXSW).
STADIEM has developed a joint pan-European framework for an effective, market driven start-up and scale-up growth support structure following a start-up to corporate supplier model approach. The framework was implemented and validated during the STADIEM Innovation Program. The impact analysis of the STADIEM Program highlights the project's short business impacts (business leads, valuation, ARR, ...) and the longer term business impacts for the beneficiaries with min 4 exits, min 5 investment rounds and min 10 business deals. It highlights STADIEM's relevance for the EU media policy agenda, in particular STADIEM as a targeted financial intervention able to catalyse innovation and business value for the media sector.
STADIEM developed 5 scenarios to continue its journey as pan-European accelerator for the media sector, identified 5 potential funding opportunities and presented individual exploitation plans for each of its six partners to allow the further sustainability of its results in the partner's ecosystems. The project has generated a program framework handbook, an operational portfolio with operational and legal documentation for implementing the program, a communication platform to interact with the program beneficiaries and to generate business intelligence for program owners, a portfolio of innovative scale-ups and start-ups and a database of relevant actors for start-up and scale-up driven innovation in the media. The handbook, portfolio and the instructions for building the communication platform are published as deliverables on the STADIEM website. The list of names of beneficiaries (startups and scaleups/media companies) participating in the STADIEM program is published in the community tab on the website. The database is confidential.
In order inform, activate and engage the European media-ecosystem around the four hubs, the open calls and the STADIEM Innovation program, a community building strategy was executed, including showcasing the STADIEM solutions and program at 26 major international media conferences (IBC, Slush, Big Score, Future Week, Latitude59, ...) to different stakeholders via STADIEM events, boots, workshops or participation in events of other networks (FMH event Slush and SXSW).
STADIEM has developed a joint pan-European framework for an effective, market driven start-up and scale-up growth support structure following a start-up to corporate supplier model approach. The framework was implemented and validated during the STADIEM Innovation Program. The impact analysis of the STADIEM Program highlights the project's short business impacts (business leads, valuation, ARR, ...) and the longer term business impacts for the beneficiaries with min 4 exits, min 5 investment rounds and min 10 business deals. It highlights STADIEM's relevance for the EU media policy agenda, in particular STADIEM as a targeted financial intervention able to catalyse innovation and business value for the media sector.
STADIEM developed 5 scenarios to continue its journey as pan-European accelerator for the media sector, identified 5 potential funding opportunities and presented individual exploitation plans for each of its six partners to allow the further sustainability of its results in the partner's ecosystems. The project has generated a program framework handbook, an operational portfolio with operational and legal documentation for implementing the program, a communication platform to interact with the program beneficiaries and to generate business intelligence for program owners, a portfolio of innovative scale-ups and start-ups and a database of relevant actors for start-up and scale-up driven innovation in the media. The handbook, portfolio and the instructions for building the communication platform are published as deliverables on the STADIEM website. The list of names of beneficiaries (startups and scaleups/media companies) participating in the STADIEM program is published in the community tab on the website. The database is confidential.
Most business support are currently sector-/technology agnostic, meaning that they do not address the needs of the specific sectors or technologies which thus under-exploit the innovation potential. Furthermore, regardless of how great a technology or how innovative an idea is, introduction to the market and adoption by many is never guaranteed. STADIEM provides a holistic business and technology support framework for creating innovative solutions for the media sector and across-ecosystems (across-Europe). By helping scale-ups in connecting with the media sector, STADIEM aims to provide a roadmap for scaling up concrete and technology-based products/services to the media market. STADIEM tailors its services to the needs of innovators in the targeted sectors to maximise results. Secondly, STADIEM addresses the need in Europe to generate new media solutions that break the silo's within the media-industry. By focussing on eight technology challenges that require silo-breaking and by requiring start-ups to go beyond the state of the art in these fields. Thirdly STADIEM goes beyond the state of the art since its start-up program wants to tackle the current business and innovation challenges of the EU media industry (market fragmentation, crisis traditional media, GAFA platform economy) leading often to failed or limited pilots due to lack of funding or hesitation of investors to invest. STADIEM funding mechanism and program is developed to address the challenges.
The impacts that STADIEM generates on the European digital and media ecosystems are the following :
-identifying and scaling SME grown innovations and startups with relevant services to ensure the competitiveness and innovation capacity of the European media ecosystem globally
- introducing new innovations to the European market through enabling go to market approaches for the startups participating in the program
- validating media innovations through the expertise provided by the consortium, 3rd parties, the STADIEM startup acceleration program and corporate pilots
- delivering new experiences by making innovative media solutions available to the consumers through the final pilot stage of the STADIEM program
- enabling technology transfer (and exits) through promoting cross border European startup and corporate collaboration structure
- contributing to the enrichment of the European media ecosystem through the creation of pan-European network of innovation hubs, the startup program and dissemination of results as well as enhanced collaboration between the innovation, venture capital, and corporate media stakeholders
The impacts that STADIEM generates on the European digital and media ecosystems are the following :
-identifying and scaling SME grown innovations and startups with relevant services to ensure the competitiveness and innovation capacity of the European media ecosystem globally
- introducing new innovations to the European market through enabling go to market approaches for the startups participating in the program
- validating media innovations through the expertise provided by the consortium, 3rd parties, the STADIEM startup acceleration program and corporate pilots
- delivering new experiences by making innovative media solutions available to the consumers through the final pilot stage of the STADIEM program
- enabling technology transfer (and exits) through promoting cross border European startup and corporate collaboration structure
- contributing to the enrichment of the European media ecosystem through the creation of pan-European network of innovation hubs, the startup program and dissemination of results as well as enhanced collaboration between the innovation, venture capital, and corporate media stakeholders