Sandbox Hub pitching in Munich – Networking and experience sharing “Bavarian Style”
On the 22th of November 2018 around 60 innovation-enthusiasts from broadcasters and media companies were presented a showcase from the European Sandboxes and start-ups / intrapreneurs that collaborate in MediaRoad’s Sandbox Hub. In an interactive presentation, Peter De Paepe (Head of Startup collaborations and Intrapreneurship at VRT Sandbox) gave an overview of the Sandbox concept. To make things more tangible, he presented practical insights and learnings from the Sandbox activities so far, specifically the DO’s and DON’Ts to successfully kick-off such innovation accelerators. In this session, the experience from +/- 100 cases done by VRT Sandbox in 4 years’ time were shared with the audience.
Peter De Paepe explained that depending on the focus, innovation projects from the Sandbox can help to boost the broadcaster’s brand or to improve internal processes and workflows potentially at lower costs. The Sandbox concept can lower the threshold to actually embrace innovations and works with a “closed wallet” principle. Participating start-ups / intrapreneurs are provided a safe environment to test and develop their product and receive broadcaster’s expertise and coaching, as well as access to internal and external networks (leading to an increased visibility of the product / development).
Lead by Sarah Geeroms (Project leader VRT Sandbox International), under the MediaRoad umbrella, a European network of Media Innovation Accelerators is being created. Since the start of the MediaRoad project, 10 additional Sandboxes have already joined the Sandbox Hub and discussions with more interested broadcasters are ongoing. Sarah explained that setting up a local Sandbox is not that difficult: “Sandbox members get access to the VRT Sandbox Toolkit and expertise to help them in successfully organizing such an initiative. Broadcasters throughout Europe so far have shown a large interest and the ongoing requests exceed our expectations.” Key success factors for setting up a Sandbox, amongst other things, are good communication, full support from the top management, availability of personnel resources at the broadcaster and a minimal budget.
In the following pitching session, 6 Sandbox Hub Members and 8 start-ups took turns to present their aims and (intermediate) results. Sandbox representatives from existing Sandbox Hub concepts were present (e.g. BBC Taster and Next Media Accelerator) as well as coordinators from newly initiated Sandboxes who are currently developing their projects (e.g. ERT in Greece and RTP in Portugal).
Interested in how these pitching sessions went? The start-up ‘Voizzup’ made a vlog about their experience.
