The ASSIGN proposal aims to overcome barriers to the recruitment of highly qualified specialists (PhD or equivalent) that cannot be recruited on the national job market, but whose knowledge would be crucial to open up opportunities for innovation and significant growth for the enterprise. With ASSIGN we expected that the Innovation Associate who will be hired will catalyse the radical product innovation of the company’s multimedia content management and publishing platform. The main expertise and skills of the Innovation Associate we expect to source with this recruitment are in the area of semantic multimedia content analysis and indexing, primarily in the domain of image and video and secondary in the domains of text, speech and audio analysis. We foresee a permanent post for the Innovation Associate after the end of the grant and plan to commercialise the innovation developed in the vertical markets of company/enterprise content, team/project content, branding and event content. IN2 is very well positioned to supply the Innovation Associate with training in current and trending topics in the area of web software development, that are very much needed in the labour market. With our private cloud and our engagement in application deployment (DevOps) we give to the Innovation Associate additional know-how to advance professionally in areas that can cover the complete software innovation cycle. Moreover, the Innovation Associate will benefit from gaining valuable insights into commercial innovation management and business aspects.

PAL aims to perform a feasibility study and elaborate a business plan testing out the innovative idea of making public spaces accessible for All. The PAL idea is simple: provide an indoor navigation service similar to what we are used to when driving. The project focuses on users with specific needs especially elderly and visually impaired persons who need to find their way through complex travel hubs and train stations. Although the idea is simple, its implementation is quite challenging. There are numerous technologies involved (indoor localisation, mapping, routing, information presentation) which have to be mastered. Fortunately, in PAL we base on technology the partners have developed in previous projects, notably MOBILITY funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research, and successfully tested at the Frankfurt airport. PAL will assess the technological viability, the application boundaries, the value added, the business model, and the economic viability of this MOBILITY solution with a single focused aim to work out a credible, realistic and achievable business plan. IN2 and SPRING, the partners in this endeavor, have successfully collaborated in the past in MOBILITY, own its project results and are fully committed to bring them to the market.

Marketing, PR and communication professionals need tools to support them in the creation of engaging, up-to-date content experiences that their clients can use for establishing meaningful connections to customers and key stakeholders. Creative companies delivering these tools are the main enablers for all new forms of communication we currently experience: from cross-platform content creation to transmedia storytelling. Nowadays with multiple channels, vast amounts of social content, multiple touch points and interactions, constant innovation is required for keeping creative professionals and tools on top of trends and enabling them to deliver. Over the last 10 years, multimedia content analysis has been an exciting research area widely addressed in academia. While initial aspirations and expectations of these new algorithms were not immediately fully met, over the last couple of years the technology has matured a lot, up to a point where it can now be deployed in commercial settings. EMMA will transfer state-of-the art technology in multimedia analysis from the labs to creative industry SMEs, more specifically to solution providers for the media management, branding, marketing and communication. This new technology will enhance existing commercial services, helping SMEs that are active in these sectors to solve current needs of their customers, and thus become more competitive in their market. EMMA focuses on two application areas, tourism and events, addressing the needs of destinations, and events to better drive, connect and engage with audiences. The impact in these vertical markets is huge, since both are among the key industries in Europe. We plan to commercialise the results of EMMA soon after the project end and directly create over 50 jobs in the sixth year of operations.