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Story 09 March 2021
Public

Open Call - EIC Corporate Day with Mercedes-Benz: Shift into high gear

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Jasper Havermans

The European Innovation Council Business Acceleration Services and Mercedes-Benz invite you to apply to our joint EIC Corporate Day on 11 & 12 May 2021. This specially designed service is meant to gear up your collaboration with the German car maker and forge new partnerships.

 

Mercedes-Benz, the German car maker which focuses on the development, production and sales of passenger cars, vans and vehicle-related services, aspires to be the leader in the fields of electric mobility and vehicle software. Mercedes-Benz AG is continually expanding its worldwide production network with around 35 production sites on four continents, while gearing itself to meet the requirements of electric mobility. At the same time, the company is constructing and extending its global battery production network on three continents. As sustainability is the guiding principle of the Mercedes-Benz strategy and for the company itself, this means creating lasting value for all stakeholders: for customers, employees, investors, business partners and society as a whole. In that light, Mercedes-Benz is looking for innovative new solutions and services in numerous different fields (more info on the challenges below). 

EIC-beneficiaries selected to attend the EIC Corporate Day with Mercedes-Benz on 11 & 12 May 2021, will have access to specific training, pitching, pre-arranged meetings with top decision-makers from Mercedes-Benz and the possibility to network with high-level partners and like-minded innovators in a dedicated online event.

 

Applications are open until 15 March 2021.

 

Who can apply?

Mercedes-Benz is looking for EIC startups working on innovative and disruptive approaches for:

1. Health: 

- Scope:

Address health topics with solutions inside car in regard to: 

  • Mental health/mindfulness (looking for app solutions in the form of "content stores", primary focus is software (that could maybe later be integrated with hardware comfort functions)
  • Health monitoring (using smart devices, sensors, apps), especially medical grade sensing would be interesting (in direction of medical engineering), also relates to security aspects (eg sudden sickness detection)
  • Camera detection (e.g. for posture training or measuring vitals like heart rate or blood pressure)

- Impact: To be applied within vehicle, customer facing

- Technology: Preferably software based. Could be mindful content, sensors, camera systems or others

 

2. Female customer product innovation

- Scope

As female customers are becoming an increasingly important target group for MB we are looking for product related innovations in regards to:

  • Art (e.g. immersive experience of Art in the car) 
  • Health, Hygiene & Mindfullness
  • Mental & Physical Fitness
  • Shy Tech
  • Target group specific apps

-    Technology:  independent but always related to the car as product. Solution can be both hardware and software

 

3. Input Technologies for Future UX

- Scope: 

  • Improving UX for customers by using technologies in the area of 
  • input through intuitive control with gestures/face tracking, eye tracking, gaze control, pupillometry, eyelid movement
  • input through tactile control with smart surfaces / advanced surface sensor tech e.g. vibration / on projections / physical 3D interfaces
  • input through passive control with emotion tracking /object tracking with intelligent camera systems (or other technologies)
  • input from third parties (within and outside of vehicle e.g. kids, pets, objects) or the vehicle environment (e.g. AI sound recognition from outside or 3D sensing cameras)

- Impact: 

  • Innovation to be applied in vehicle (customer facing)

 

4. Leather Alternative 

- Scope: 

  • sustainable Leather alternatives (1. with fillers made from renewable raw materials AND 2. out of growing/fermented materials like fungi/biobased nano-Cellulose)
  • reducing the use of petroleum-based materials

-    Impact: 

  • sustainable & animal-free interior for our future cars of Mercedes-Benz

 

5. Digital Marketing:

5.1. Content Automation:

What does Content Automation mean for us? We want to be able to target our customers throughout any channel with the right, automatically generated ad. That starts with understanding the customer, utilizing existing data (such as from a CRM) but also social or on-side data. From that point, we automatically want to create an ad. This can be in many shapes but should have our products at the center.

We need a solution, which is able to display the exact right car from the exact right angle to our customers. If you e.g. had a look at different seat options that is maybe something, we want to target you with? Maybe even in an innovative format? 

For this, we need help on both the data-delivery pipeline for our product images (or videos) as well as the ad-generation engine. We are very happy to look left and right of this space. 

Any company, which can contribute to our vision of hyper-personalized ad-generation is generally of interest and we will evaluate if the collaboration fits to our big picture.

Companies which can help are in the following sectors:

  • 3D Models and Data Pipeline
  • Car-Configuration
  • Personalization engine (in our context)
  • Marketing automation (for our context)
  • Automatic (Marketing) Content Creation 

 

5.2. Next-gen Marketing Portal

We aim to build a one-stop shop for all our global marketers. With this platform our target is to have a set of value-adding services (some ideas follow below) and a connection to existing solutions (see below as well). We want to focus on our marketer’s user experience, providing all services at their fingertips in an appealing, easy and convenient way. Any company who can solve all our challenge or contribute to parts is highly welcome. Out-of-the-box ideas will be taken into consideration as well as straight-forward solutions.

Solutions the portal should have means to connect with: Salesforce, Sitecore, Google Analytics, PowerBI, Facelift, TalkWalker, SocialBakers

Features we believe are useful (more ideas welcome):

Dashboards, Newsfeed, Campaign Planners, Task Management, Marketing Calendars, Asset Performance Analytics, Budget Planning Dashboard, Administrative Options (User Rights, etc), Guidelines, Strategic Information, Tool Overview

 

6. Cloudmobility:

We want our customers to spend more time solving mobility problems and less maintaining infrastructure. We are looking for partners who would like to use our infrastructure and platform solutions to build managed services for a variety of our customer’s needs:

  • Managed MongoDB Service
  • Managed Postgres Service
  • Managed Logging and Monitoring Services

Our partners would automate subscription, provision, backup solutions, monitor healthy and highly-available instances and provide basic support, together with cloudmobility.

 

Opportunities for selected EIC-funded SMEs

  • Privileged access to one of the world’s leading companies with the potential to initiate strategic partnerships along with increased visibility and possible access to new markets;
  • Networking opportunities with relevant business counterparts based on your company profile;
  • Personalised online training on pitching techniques and Mercedes-Benz’s specifications before the event; 
  • Services related to support before, during and after the event.

 

Application

You can apply by clicking on the following link

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

In your application form, you should include the answer to the questions:

  • What is your business compliance with the event?
  • What are your expected specific synergies/outcomes for your potential business with the Corporation?

Please acknowledge the information you provide on the application form will be shared with Mercedes-Benz to maximise potential benefits and ensure the effectiveness of meetings. Mercedes-Benz based on its business interests, will select the final participants among the applicants.

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.

 

Cancellation policy

Cancellations will only be considered in duly documented cases of “force majeure”. Unjustified cancellation can lead to exclusion in future Business Acceleration Services events. For additional information, please refer to our helpdesk (please choose “EIC Corporate Day with Mercedes-Benz” as the subject). 

 

DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.

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