OpEN @ Slush 2018: Where innovation is the mindset
Slush is the world’s leading start up event and has more than 20.000 tech heads joining every year – think of it as a collision of a festival and a conference. It’s not a business, but a community of people who love what they do. So what better place for the Open Ecosystem Network to be than here?
After opening the very first beta version of OpEN 2 years ago at Slush, we are proud to call it our home away from home – we wouldn’t know a better place to meet a more diverse group of open innovation ecosystem players from all over the world.
At the beginning of December, it was time for the 2018 edition of Slush – and boy, what an edition it has been: From passionate innovators to start-ups, scaleup business owners searching for new partners and globally recognized corporations – everyone attended, and we kicked the Slush week of with a bang.
Starting off on the right foot – or wheel: The future of mobility
Every Slush is accompanied with side events and this year, the one to kick it off for OpEN was ‘Cars as an Intelligent Platform’: Together with Espoo Innovation Garden, Daimler and Telefonica. The event brought the future of smart mobility and the big players of the automotive industry together to share how to address the ongoing disruptions in the industry, including data driven mobility, end-to-end service orchestration, assurance and customer support assisted with AI to 5G use cases including automated driving and traffic safety.
As one attendee put it: “New ways of collaboration are coming to the forefront, #openinnovation is now integrated in the strategy of big corporations – even #coopetition is now taking place for example between the likes of Daimler and BMW.”
By the way: If you are interested in the future of mobility and 5G, you are a most welcome member in the Connecting Cars with 5G Community!
With the future in mind: From education to energy
With their Future of Education challenge still live on OpEN, StartNorth came to share the success of applicants willing to make it to the 100 Impact Makers Program and make an awesome announcement as well: Their newest collaboration partners include Nokia, Accenture, and HTC Vive – a VR solution that is definitely ready for future education challenges.
Besides the education of the future, energy was also a hot topic in Slush: Tespack, awarded “Best Energy Startup in EU” by the European Commission as well as mentioned in the Forbes “30 under 30” list second year in a row, joined the OpEN Community to explore ways to collaborate and implement the latest energy tech with 5G.
As to what makes OpEN the perfect platform for Tespack, the Founder & CEO, Mario Aguilera of Tespack said: “Tespack had the pleasure to join Nokia’s Open Network Ecosystems at Slush, meeting with leading tech companies/startups to join forces and find ways to collaborate with each other, which is the way to bring forward the best technologies to the market and in our case the #FutureOfEnergy”.
Right after Slush also our long-term OpEN members from Accenture convinced Accenture to join as a public Partner in OpEN.
So, all in all one could go ahead and say: Slush 2018 has been a success and 2018 itself has been great for OpEN as well. With currently almost 40.000 users, 300+ projects, 150 challenges and 150 communities onboard, we want to say: Thank you and let’s make 2019 even better! Let us take the next steps toward innovating – right here on OpEN!