Winners of the “emphasis” Open Innovation Initiative!

January 2020

The final of the “emphasis” Open Innovation Initiative was conducted.

      Who were the 3 top winners that stood out and were awarded?

On Wednesday the 22nd of January, the final of the “emphasis” Open Innovation Initiative took place at the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation. This Cardlink initiative is implemented in cooperation with the Athens Centre For Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ACEin) of the Athens University of Economics and Business. The goal of the initiative is to encourage the emergence of new business ideas and innovative products and services so that they can be developed and implemented in a real-life environment.

For an entire year, a joint team of Cardlink personnel and participants from the Athens University of Economics and Business worked systematically toward the needs of the competition, which received a total of thirty-two applications. The participants were invited to submit their business proposals in one of the four sections: Business Analytics, Customer Experience, Payments/Added Value Services and Retail Modernization. Out of these, the five best ideas stood out and reached the final; from bus alerts, to virtual retails stores, storefronts that monitor the customer’s gaze, e-shops of small businesses and cloud POS solutions.

Following a combined vote by the committee and the audience that attended the ceremony, first prize was awarded to Vitrina Box, an online platform for virtual browsing of businesses, the second one to the Enneas team that created a chatbot creation platform as an alternative sales channel for any business, and the third one to Pame Stasi, an application featuring alerts so that no one misses their bus, along with other services.

Cardlink will continue to support the teams at a strategic partnership level, aiming to create breeding ground for the “Cardlink Innovation Hub” that will provide value to all major and small retail players as well as the entrepreneurial ecosystem.