The European Innovation Council Business Acceleration Services and AB InBev invite you to participate in our brand-new Corporate Pathfinder-initiative. This is a great opportunity for Pathfinder-beneficiaries to enhance your cooperation with large corporates.

 Applications are open until 30 August 2020
 

What is the EIC Corporate-Pathfinder Cooperation?

Innovators that are still in the earlier stages of development can face difficulties in finding the right support to develop their research/project and make it attractive for the market. Having a close connection to relevant industries can provide them with new insights and valuable expertise. With our EIC Corporate Pathfinder Cooperation-programme we are bringing together Pathfinder-beneficiaries with three large European corporates. Together they will work on further (co)-developing their respective technologies, as well as validating them on an industrial level. 
Pathfinder-projects with innovative solutions to the challenges posed by AB InBev are encouraged to apply (more info below).

Selection procedure

This initiative is only open to EIC Pathfinder-beneficiaries. AB InBev will dedicate a team of experts to select the projects they would like to collaborate with based on the challenges posed below.

In September 2020, the pre-selected projects will meet online with corporate decision makers in dedicated events (each corporate will host a separate event) to present their solutions and establish one-to-one business discussions.  

After this initial meeting, each corporate will take a final decision regarding the Pathfinder-beneficiaries with whom they will pilot collaboration. Successful joint projects will be invited to showcase their solution in a dedicated event in Frankfurt, Germany (tbd).

AB InBev’s Challenges

AB InBev’s is looking for looking for Pathfinder-beneficiaries working on innovative solutions for the following two challenges:

1. Recruiting and accessing consumers

AB InBev is switching to Agile project management with an increasing need for consumer centricity.

Those objectives are typically outsourced to Consumer testing agencies organizing consumer recruitment, fieldwork and data collection while reporting and data analysis are automated and run in house. Cost of such test are too high to allow close consumer interaction during development and we typically focus on quant validation only. Although agency provide high quality and objective results, this way of working doesn’t allow close interaction of the development team with consumers. Most of the research set up including designing consumer task, qualitative guide, questionnaire could be internalized leveraging available expertise and existing data collection solution such as Eye Question software. 

The main challenge for AB InBev is to recruit and access an Affordable Consumer data base with an incentive system, GDPR compliant limiting access to personal data, where we could develop over time research set up modules starting with:

• Online quant/ semi quant Concept screening and optimization
• Co-creation consumer panel, with early adopters, allowing iterative interaction over multiple weeks including online and face toface tasks, ethno/ declarative / behavior set up
• Market audit and product sourcing across multiple markets

2. Digital Consumer Experience

The main challenge is to find one or more disruptive digital solutions for packaging to improve consumer experience and enhance our data capabilities: The solution can address one or more points below:

• Consumer New Experiences
• Product Customization
• Product Traceability
• Transparency
• Others

More details regarding AB InBev’s challenges can be found here.

Opportunities for selected EIC-funded projects

• The chance to meet in an online environment with top corporate representatives;
• Co-developing and validating your technology with top corporate players;
• Personalised online training on pitching techniques and AB InBev specifications before the event;
• Services related to support before, during and after the event.

Application

This application is open to all Pathfinder-beneficiaries.

You can apply by clicking on the following link: https://entrypoint-smei.easme-web.eu/form/152  

After logging in with your EU-Login, please fill in the respective form.

In your application form, you should answer all questions and explain how you will approach this challenge and why your company has the most innovative solution.

Please acknowledge the information you provide on the application form will be shared with AB InBev to maximise potential benefits and ensure the effectiveness of this challenge. The Business Acceleration Services will contact all applicants once the selection process has been concluded. However, this contact does not include feedback or recommendations to those not selected.

Read our report on EIC Corporate Days to learn more about what we do and how we do it and check the EIC Community regularly. To explore other opportunities to connect with the largest corporates in Europe, keep an eye on our events page. Should you have any questions regarding the event, please refer to our helpdesk: https://community-smei.easme-web.eu/contact (please choose “EIC Corporate Pathfinder" as the subject).