Innovalley

After a month of intense work, the first edition of Imagine Creativity Center has come to an end. The program’s highlight was the final event that took place last Wednesday at Public Works, San Francisco. The participants, the dreamers,  presented their ideas around 4 projects: the future of mobility, smart apparel 2.0, the future of shopping experience and the future of advertising.

Innovalley, as sponsor of Imagine, led the project about smart apparel 2.0.

Janire, Óscar and Aitor (the Smart Apparel team) surprised us with an innovative solution to improve the sleeping experience. Their project, called Smart Sleeping,  consists of a set of connected blanket, pillow and pajamas that interact with a Smart phone app. The system includes revolutionary features like biometric tracking, multimedia resources, communication capacities… Moreover, users can set up their profile from the app, store it on the cloud and take their sleeping experience anywhere.

Thanks guys for such a great job! Keep on dreaming!

Tuesday was a great day for Innovalley.Launch: Silicon Valley 2011 , an event co produced by SVASE and Garage Ventures, featured 30 new companies that had 6-minutes plus 4 minutes Q&A to present their new products and services. Innovalley was one of them (selected among 300 hundred applicants). The event gathered the Silicon Valley’s top VCs, Angels, corporate development executives, entrepreneurs, bloggers and media.It was great meeting so many interesting people, interact with investors and see their interest in our Youshine bags and new products. Above all, we’re very  excited to announce that the audience voted Innovalley as ‘most likely to succeed, 2011′ on the mobile category. This recognition is a new source of energy to keep on walking and a proof that we’re taking the right path. Thank you very much to the audience for voting us and thanks so much to the organizers and sponsors for this amazing event.

Also, you can read the Event Press Release here

Today has been a great day! A group of Executive-MBA students from the EOI is visiting Silicon Valley and we had the chance to spend the whole day working with them.

The goal was to build innovative products and business models on top of some wearable technologies and software that Innovalley has developed. We first presented the company in a 15-minute pitch. We also presented our innovation management processes and we proposed them with the challenge: they had to work in seven teams and come up with a new product using a piece of Innovalley technology. They had 1 hour to brainstorm and 2 hours to work on their investor pitch (5 minutes).

The audience acted as investors and each one of us had to invest 1M dollars in 3 projects maximum. We still don’t know what team raised most of the funds. However, it was great to get so many brilliant ideas and we really enjoyed the time with such a talented and motivated group of people.

Thanks EOI!!!

Our partner Cetemmsa is currently developing new technological solutions to be integrated in high-performance clothes like gloves and jackets.

They are using heating technologies that allow the user to control the temperature of the clothes.

They are also working on a smart snow board that has printed luminiscent inks to improve the design and the security during the night. Moreover, it includes microsensors to monitor the movement of the user, with that you can record and reproduce virtually all the jumps and movements to upload in the Internet.

Here you have a video about all these technologies:

Yesterday, we had the pleasure to meet the winners of the Yuzz Program!

Yuzz is a contest for young entrepreneurs (under 25) who have a technology-based idea. The organizers selected 10 talented entrepreneurs from Barcelona and Madrid and offered them the chance to accelerate their business ideas guided by excellent professionals and well-known entrepreneurs. As part of the prize, they got the opportunity to come to Silicon Valley for a week  in order to develop their international skills, get to know other entrepreneurs and learn about the way business is done here.

Innovalley organized an Innovation session with them. We first presented the company in a 10-minute pitch. We also talked about how we understand and manage innovation within the company. And finally, we proposed them with a challenge: they had to work in two teams and develop a new product or service built on top of a piece of Innovalley technology. In less than one and a half hour they had to define a problem, a solution and a business model. They presented their ideas in front of the other group and the jury who evaluated the results.

The winner hasn’t been revealed yet, but we are impressed by the talent of the two teams and the ideas they developed. This is, once more, an example of how enriching collaboration and open innovation can be.

Thanks Yuzz for your great ideas! You guys rock!

“Carbon nanotubes used to make batteries from fabrics“

Our friends Fabio and Mauro from Stanford University are conducting a special investigation of much interest to Innovalley. Congratulations Friends.

Here is an abstract from their work and the story that appeared on the BBC.