For the 10th edition of the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC), prizes for a total amount of 1 million euro will be awarded.
This prize award services, products and business innovations using satellite navigation in their everyday life.
The competition is divided into regional and special prizes. For the regional prizes, regional challenges can be conducted in 20 partners regions.
An overall winner – The Galileo Master – is selected among the winners of the special and regional prizes.
You may submit your project until the 10 June 2013. The winners will be selected by a panel of expert from July to September and the award ceremony will be held on 5 November 2013 in Munich.
Under the motto “Take the Next Step with Your Business Case”, individuals and teams of entrepreneurs from industry, research, and universities can benefit from cooperating with partner regions worldwide and a number of key stakeholders – including the European Patent Office, a new partner in 2013.
The ESNC is once again inviting entrepreneurs from research and industry to present value-added business applications for the emerging satellite navigation market. The current market for satellite services – such as for mobility, health, or safety – is already worth more than EUR 100 billion, and is expected to rise to EUR 240 billion by 2020. The ESNC supports participating innovators in realising their applications and business cases through an extensive partner network that covers the technical, economical, and legal aspects involved. “With one-third of the previous winners having founded a company and around 80% of the presented applications having been implemented, the competition has shown its ability to spur innovation and support the creation of new businesses in the emerging satellite navigation market,” confirms Thorsten Rudolph, managing director of competition organiser Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO).
In this edition of the competition, participants can choose between more than 20 partner regions worldwide. Each partner will award a prize designed to support its regional winner’s business case. In 2013, the ESNC is welcoming Flanders/Belgium, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, North Rhine-Westphalia/Germany, and Norway as new partner regions. In addition, leading institutional partners are offering special prizes in this year’s competition: the European Space Agency (ESA), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the European GNSS Agency (GSA), as well as the European Patent Office (EPO) and Metaio GmbH for the first time. Furthermore, students and research associates can submit their ideas to the ESNC University Challenge.
Both the regional and special prizes focus on helping participants take the next step with their business cases. This year’s ESNC prize pool is worth around EUR 1 million – including cash prizes, business incubation, coaching, patent consulting, prototyping and marketing support, access to customers and user communities, and publicity.
For this year’s iteration of the competition, the European Commission has extended its financial support for the competition’s European partner regions and sponsors that will be passed directly on to the winners in the form of prizes.
The submission phase for this year’s ESNC is from 1 April to 30 June 2013. At www.galileo-masters.eu, participants and other interested parties can access all of the information on this year’s prizes and partners, the terms of participation, and a direct link to sign in to the database. The winners will then be recognised at a festive awards ceremony to be held in Munich, Germany, on 5 November 2013.
