Entrepreneurship in action: supporting the global "SmartCamp" competition

Spain’s third edition of the global “SmartCamp” competition, through which IBM promotes entrepreneurship in 15 cities around the world, was held in Madrid.

There were five start-ups in the final phase: Upplication, Passnfly, Torus Software, Biicode and Apparcar. All of these tech projects have a common goal: to build a more intelligent world. Biicode, the winner of the Spanish edition, will compete in the European semi-finals in Vienna, on 7 and 8 November and, if successful, will proceed to the world finals in San Francisco on 4-6 February 2014.

This is the second consecutive year that Ferrovial has collaborated on this entrepreneurship initiative. Other collaborating entities include IESE and ESADE business schools, investors such as Big Sur Ventures, the Association of Young Entrepreneurs (AJE) of Madrid, and StepOne.

Participating in this type of initiative offers us another way to strengthen our open innovation model, with which we seek to create a community of partners who enrich the innovation process through cooperation with companies, public administrations, universities and entrepreneurs.

Evaluation and mentoring

As part of our efforts to support entrepreneurship, we assumed two major responsibilities in the “SmartCamp” project:

– Firstly, we analysed the candidates, contributing to the final evaluation.

– Secondly, we undertook to act as mentors and to track projects related to our areas of activity.

This may lead to viability analyses and proofs of concept, which would be the step prior to project execution.

At Ferrovial, we are open to guiding start-ups’ technologies and business models with a view to jointly addressing disruptive ideas that are difficult to implement at a large company. Our participation in “SmartCamp” is part of that process, which also includes other initiatives such as pasion>ie, developed by Accenture and IE Business School, and the Spain Startup & Investor Summit, held annually in Madrid.