Blockchain Innovation in Logistics and Beyond by Regionalmanagement NordHessen

July has been a very interesting month for the SCALE UP consortium. In our last article Innovation Lab into practice we explained how our partner, Regionalmanagement NordHessen, was going to implement its Best Practice MoWin Innovation Lab through the event Blockchain Innovation in Logistics and Beyond.

Finally, during the 6th and 7th of July we were able to enjoy this productive and international hybrid event. Some of our partners had the opportunity to travel to Germany and take part in this two-day experience in the Science Park Kassel.

On 6 July, the event was entitled From Startup to scaleup. With the mission to promote entrepreneurship and strategies for start-ups, this space was created to support business opportunities. Impressive start-ups were presented: Betterspace, working on digital services for hotels; Pramo, a life science startup, and Hydro Neo- IOT, an Asian shrimp farming industry. In addition, Hessen Trade and Invest and German Accelerator presented innovative formats for start-ups to enter different markets and internationalise.

As it was defined, a Scale Up is usually a young SME with realistic, high-growth oriented ambition, with a stable core team, driven by innovation, ready to receive equity and established turnover. A Scale Up needs right financing (such as project funding, equity, guarantees and loans), C-level competences for company organisation and culture, quality, resilience and innovation; recruiting onboarding, internationalisation and marketing and sales.

Some of the most salient ideas during the startups' presentations were both internal and external factors necessary for real “start-up success”: speed, precision, transparent communication with the team, knowledge management, establishing alliances that multiply their growth, changing a business model that does not work, networking with other founders, choosing investors with a wide network or creating an advisory board and a chairman.

On 7 July our partner Regionalmanagement NordHessen organised the event Blockchain Innovation in Logistics and Beyond, where they explored Blockchain through the Innovation Lab format and exchanged ideas on blockchain technology and global innovation with applications from different sectors.

During the session, leveraging blockchain focused on the potential of a decentralized world, with special emphasis on potential blockchain use cases. Blockchain was analysed as the infrastructure for applications mapping from real world processes, securely composing on-chain and off-chain computing resources. Moreover, it was also explained how the programmable logic on the blockchain and distributed ledger state is secured by cryptography. Several use cases were showcased, such as applications as building blocks of decentral ecosystems, track and trace- supply chains and platooning.

On the other hand, Blockchain-based innovation was shown from the perspective of a global fintech ADDX. It was explained how the complexities in financial markets can be solved with an integrated solution: single venue for private market issuers to raise capital, marketplace for investors to trade private market securities, world-wide investor base via ubiquitous access and all digital platform with automated processes.

Digital securities take the form of security tokens on a secure distributed ledger. They provide great accessibility with accredited and institutional investors, transparent fees or no lockup, among others. Security tokens are traditional securities in a digital format, and can represent equity, debt and even alternative investments through the process of tokenisation.

They highlighted that blockchain is highly relevant at scale when the number of participants are large and the cost to manually serve each transaction and post trade activities is high. The benefits are fractionalization, immutable ledger and smart contracts.

Finally, the grants and funding for innovation projects were analysed, focusing also on the international dimension. Open Calls and German Programs are welcome to help and open technology, focusing on a technological innovation driven.

Many and varied ideas were shared during these two-day sessions. From SCALE UP today we want to celebrate the great work that our partner Regionalmanagement NordHessen did in the organisation of this event. The MoWin Innovation Lab is a smart Best Practice that we are sure will have a fantastic impact and success in the future of many European regions. 

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