Boosting entrepreneurs in Baden-Württemberg with new ESA BIC
The new ESA Business Incubation Centre (ESA BIC) will support entrepreneurs to develop business models from space technologies at two new locations in the German state of Baden-Württemberg: in Reutlingen and in the Friedrichshafen-Immenstadt area.
“This is an important day for Baden-Wuerttemberg,” said Minister of Economy, Labour and Housing Baden-Wuerttemberg Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut at the grand opening 13 April. His ministry subsidises the new ESA BIC centre and its start-ups with up to €750 000.
With aerospace being a driving force for innovations and generating huge leverage for numerous other economic sectors, especially to the current transformation process into a digitally connected world, it opens up a sheer endless potential for new business ideas.
“The ESA BICs are ideal incubators for such start-ups. The entrepreneurs will show how technologies deriving from space research will be easily transmitted to mundane products and services,” Hoffmeister-Kraut added.
Head of ESA`s Technology Transfers and Business Incubation Office Frank M. Salzgeber pointed out that many products nowadays contain elements from aerospace. He said “Navigation, Earth observation and space technology have long been used by companies and can be found in many purposes, from automobiles to MRT scanners in hospitals.”
Currently, ESA has 18 ESA BICs in over 40 locations throughout Europe and over 600 companies have emerged from this network, all based on the European investment in aerospace. More than 160 new start-ups are being taken in this year alone.
“This makes the ESA BICs the biggest start-up network for aerospace in the world,” Salzgeber emphasised.
“We’re delighted that we have a growing network and that we can enable process and growth within Europe by making available the knowledge and technology deriving from aerospace.”
The start-ups will be supported at the ESA BIC Baden-Württemberg for up to two years and will receive €50,000 as an incentive and possibilities for additional equity investments as well as service packages from business consultants and the partner network. This includes ten consulting and lab days at the partner companies Bosch and Airbus. After the two year in the ESA BIC, the businesses will have the possibility to be located at the Technologiepark in Tübingen-Reutlingen.
Over the next four years 30 entrepreneurs will be supported to develop their business ideas and turn them into high-tech start-up companies, based on space technology spin-off and the use of satellite data.
“We hope to achieve new impetus and innovations as well as valuable technological transfers among the industry branches in the region and astronautics through business start-ups based on aerospace,“ said Dr. Franziska Zeitler, Head of Innovation & New Markets of aerospace management of the German Aerospace Centre (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt DLR)
“This is why DLR aerospace management takes one million Euros out of the contribution for the ESA technology funding programme GSTP and invest them in start-ups from the new ESA BIC in Baden-Wuerttemberg,” Zeitler added.
Head of Airbus Defence and Space Friedrischshafen (Immenstaad) Dr. Dietmar Pilz said, “What we want here at the ESA BIC in Friedrichshafen is to enable mutual learning, to become more agile and to support corporate action. We will link the ESA BIC with our own “Innovation Factory”, because we are convinced that both sides will benefit from the exchange, and because we hope that a start-up scene stimulated by aerospace will become established at Lake Constance.”
The opening of the centre serves simultaneously as a start for the “high-precision real-time kinematic Baden-Württemberg” network of businesses and academic institutions. Real Time Kinematic (RTK) technology is to be used in the network for new implementations in areas such as construction, specifically for civil engineering and logistics, as well as for emergency services.
ESA Technology Transfer and Business Incubation Centre Initiative
ESA´s Technology Transfer and Business Incubation initiative promotes the transfer of technologies and related intellectual properties (patents) from ESA`s R&D and the Agency´s space programmes, as well as the use of satellite date, to develop new solutions and systems for citizens on Earth.
Started in 2004, today ESA has a network of technology brokers in 15 countries and 18 ESA Business Incubation Centres in 15 countries throughout Europe.
The centres have fostered over 600 new companies supported so far, and is taking in 160 new start-ups yearly.
Learn more at www.esa.int/ttp
