The document discusses the role of data incubators in shaping European Data Spaces. It describes the European Data Incubator (EDI) project which incubated over 100 startups and SMEs working with data from 30 providers over 3 rounds. EDI helped broker data sharing agreements and connect companies to investors. The REACH incubator builds on EDI's work, facilitating cross-sector experimentation through an 11-month program involving startups, large corporations, and Digital Innovation Hubs to develop trusted and secure data solutions. REACH aims to demonstrate how data silos can be broken by enabling multi-stakeholder collaboration across industries.

1. Role of Data Incubators in the shaping or
European Data Spaces
Dr. Diego López-de-Ipiña, @dipina
Project Coordinator, EDI
dipina@deusto.es
26/05/2021
@edincubator

2. EDI – European Data Incubator
1st January 2018 – 30th June 2021
7,721,340.00 (cost) – 7,142,856.76(EU contribution)
20 partners from 10 countries
New Data Providers

3. EDI – European Data Incubator
“Incubating SMEs and start-ups which are interested on applying BIG DATA Open Source
tools to sort out major tech-challenges with data from a variety of sectors”

4. EDI Incubation Funnel
• Project active 42 months, 3 rounds, winners have 8 months
• EXPLORE (2 months), EXPERIMENTATION (4 months) and EVOLVE (2 months) phases

5. EDI Key Innovations
• EDI Funnel Incubation process
• Funnel approach makes incubator increasable selective promoting growing TRL & MRL
• 4 stage incubation process comprising Open Call << EXPLORE << EXPERIMENT << EVOLVE
• Focus on maximizing the connection of corporates with startups
• 30 Data Providers onboard + 102 (30+36+36) companies incubated!
• 52 (16+18+18) Big Data-based sustainable solutions addressing real-world
challenges
• Sustainability of those companies demonstrated through 3 iterations
• Check our startups portfolio 2018, 2019 & 2020 cohorts

6. EDI as contributor to European Data Spaces
• EDI is a Data Space since it has provided a framework for trustworthy data sharing and
exchange in data ecosystems based on common agreed principles
• A Data Catalogue & a Challenge Catalogue have allowed Open Call participants to spot high potential
industrial datasets & challenges in diverse sectors (Energy, Media, Agri-food, Finance, Health, Transport,
Retail and so on)
• Subgrantees (SMEs) entering the incubator were given access to full datasets either through our Big
Data stack or directly by the Data Provider, regulating this exchange through an agreements on the use
of data signed by Data Provider, Consortium and Subgrantee
• Data and Solution sovereignty have been ensured by both parties, namely, Data Providers and
Subgrantees, respectively, preserving data ownership and business exploitation
• Terms and conditions were made clear for both sides from the beginning of incubation process and bound to a
legal contract.
• A solutions catalogue , investors showcase & what we achieve gallery have been made available to
foster sustainability of realized data-driven solutions and the incubator.

7. EDI as a broker in European Data Economy
• Focused on attracting gifted European startups/SMEs removing their usual BARRIERS to enter Big Data domain
who have managed to recruit 18M € of private investment after passing through EDI
• Data Providers with very different degrees of maturity have intervened in the incubator, most of them repeating
across the 3 rounds, 20% of them reaching to agreements with subgrantees
• “Incubator as a Service” business model where we aim to offer custom made incubation service depending on the
technological (TRL), market (MRL) and investment (IRL) readiness level as an outcome of the project.
• Focusing last efforts in Startups and Investors matchmaking
• EDI incubation process continues through “REACH: EuRopEAn incubator for trusted and secure data value CHains”

8. Thank you!
New Data Providers
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 779790

9. Role of Data Incubators in the shaping or
European Data Spaces
@reachincubator
Dr. Diego López-de-Ipiña, @dipina
Technical Coordinator, REACH
dipina@deusto.es
26/05/2021

10. REACH: EuRopEAn incubator for trusted and secure
data value CHains
• REACH is a second-generation Big Data incubator, building on EDI –
European Data Incubator to accelerate data-driven innovation in Europe
• REACH fosters collaboration between data-driven startups & SMEs, Large
corporations and Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs).
• An 11-month incubation programme, REACH facilitates cross-sector, data-driven
experimentation for development of trusted & secure innovative solutions based on
data provided by large corporations.
• In REACH, DIHs play a key role in enabling incubated organizations to improve
their innovations, providing a commercialization path and access to regional
networks

11. REACH: story behind REACH incubator
Creation of cross sector Data
Value Chains (DVC) enables
the EU data ecosystem to
reap socio-economic benefits
from large-scale deployment
of data-based products and
service
Support for innovation
experiments promoting
the development of secure
and privacy-aware
analytics solutions based
on proprietary industrial
and personal data is
required
Special emphasis should
be placed on access to,
sharing and use of
data, data security,
Artificial Intelligence
and environment of
trust (European
Commission)

12. The concept behind REACH Incubator
• Embark on an open Innovation journey, where startups/SMEs, large corporates and DIH’s
work together towards creating novel data value chains
Startups and SMEs
get to grow their business
whilst solving a big data
challenge
Large European Corporations
have a big data challenge
solved by participants
Digital Innovation Hubs
providing support

13. REACH: story behing REACH incubator
A Data Value Chain represents a multi-stakeholder data
workflow whereby applying data analytics, both data and
solution providers reciprocally benefit through joint
exploitation models

14. A DVC Example: The Electronics Systems
Industry
End users Manufacturers
Designers Tool developers

15. REACH: Data Space Ecosystem
• A multi-stakeholder ecosystem of actors
in data value chains
• Three Open Call Rounds to distribute
3,5M€ to Startups and SMEs
• REACH will incubate and coach +100
data-driven SMEs and startups in a 11-
month experiments incubation
programme focusing on trusted and
secure data value chains
• Early involvement of 9 data providers
(finance, retail, digital marketing,
tourism & entertainment, media,
healthcare, manufacturing)

16. REACH: Benefits for startups
UP TO 120K€ IN EQUITY
FREE FUNDING
ACCESS TO LARGE CORPORATIONS
AND THEIR DATA SETS
REACH TOOLBOX
VISIBILITY
BIG - DATA
INFRASTRUCTURE
DIGITAL AND
BUSINESS SKILLS
ACCESS TO PRIVATE
INVESTMENT

17. REACH Incubation Timeline
REACH is a four-phase incubation programme:
Explore. Experiment. Evolve. Expose
*Expose phase is open to all experiment phase teams
The best solution per incubation round will be awarded €20K

18. Our final aim is to demonstrate that Data Silos can be
broken by enabling a multi-stakeholder cross-sectorial
incubator to boost data-fuelled sustainable solutions.
Open Call for Data Providers & Open Call for Digital Innovation Hubs, open until June 16th 2021

19. Thank you!
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 951981
Follow us
www.reach-incubator.eu info@reach-incubator.eu