11 APOLLON Success Stories

Post APOLLON Exploitation

Every partner in APOLLON had ample opportunity to work with local and cross border living labs. Thanks to the Living Labs active in APOLLON, all (100%) of the corporate partners indicated “satisfactory” experiences while working and interacting with the living. 50% of the partners noted the importance of Living Labs even as a critical component of their internationalization strategy.

APOLLON Living Lab Experience

Among the key recommendations, all the corporates agreed for the need for Living Labs to liaise between the corporate and SMEs active in cross-border activities.

Finally, the overall figures above can be further concretised through a number of case-based ‘APOLLON success stories’. These relate to the establishment of new product lines, new business partnerships, new mergers and acquisitions, and new spin-offs and markets.

Together, they testify of the deep and positive impact that cross-border thematic Living Lab networks exert on SMEs, non-profits and large enterprises.

11.1 New product Lines During the period of 2009 to 2012, APOLLON partners (SMEs and Large Corporations) collaborated closely with each other to develop new product lines and features. Best example that demonstrates this inter-partner exchange of knowledge and technology is the QUBY case in the Netherlands, the Tunstall case in Finland and the Cloogy case (see under ISA, below).

QUBY & Logica: Home Automation Europe (HAE), WP3 APOLLON partner specializing in Home Energy Management wanted to test and integrate their product QUBY with stakeholders in Energy and Home Automation Business. Logica used this opportunity to integrate their EV charging (CiMS) product with QUBY display technology to develop an Integrated Home Controlled EV Charging Model for their customers in the Netherlands. This new product now enables residential customers to charge their Electric Vehicles without overloading or offsetting their connection capacity.

Tunstall Healthcare: Tunstall Healthcare worked as a supporting technology partner of the APOLLON Homecare Domain Network. Tunstall tested and evaluated its video presence technology and use cases to commercially roll out two products lines not just in the European Union, but across Tunstall’s footprint. Currently Tunstall has two initiatives in progress where video presence will be used. One focuses on Telehealth at a distance and the other focuses on Telecare with social inclusion.

11.2 New Business Partnerships SAP-Ydreams: As a consequence of APOLLON, working together in the Energy Monitoring and Asset Viewing use case a strategic business partnership was created between a Living Lab (Future Factory) in Germany and an SME (Ydreams) in Portugal. Using this partnership, Ydreams, took advantage from the provisioning of a software technology - the SAP Research MDI platform prototype and combined that with their knowledge and expertise to solutions that helped other SMEs such as Imeguisa with their demand for energy monitoring and CENI with their demand for an asset viewing solution to get the right and best product and created two new business partnerships.

11.3 New Mergers and Acquisitions INNOVITING: As a partner in APOLLON, INNOVITING participated in the Homecare and Independent living pilot where they successfully transferred their ADL sensor system to Spain. During this process an entire redesigned of the web application, lingual interface was changed. Thanks to the visibility provided by APOLLON and cross-border activities, the ADL system was acquired by LIVIND (Owned by Adesys and Bureauvijftig).

Process Vision: Process Vision Oy has successfully piloted user-centric energy efficiency improvement concept in the Helsinki Living Lab. With the versatile online reporting and living lab oriented end-user commitment in the office building environment PVI reached remarkable results in saving energy, minimizing carbon and energy bills. During APOLLON PVI was able to work in 4-different sites, 4-different countries under 4-different regulatory environments that lead to an increased understanding of developing new businesses in larger BRIC markets. During the course of APOLLON, Herkules and Elis Holding acquired Process Vision in 2011.

11.4 New Spin Offs and Markets ISA: ISA extensively used the opportunities created by APOLLON cross-border Living Labs to interact directly our counterparts from Finland (APOLLON partner - Process Vision).

Working towards a vision to venture in new international markets, ISA created a spinoff named ISA Sul America in São Paulo, Brazil. The enthusiasm and the business potential of Brazil for the Energy Efficiency knowledge and technology led ISA in Portugal to invite other SMEs in order to create a Living Lab embracing the complete value chain of the Energy Efficiency domain. The partnerships in this domain led to an initial number of 30 partners that created ISaLL (Intelligent Sensing and Smart Services Living Lab). Finally, the development of a new ISA product can be considered one of the success cases from Apollon Project. Cloogy is a household energy management solution that allows the monitoring and control of electrical appliances. For the creation of this new product –Cloogy –some lessons learned and new ideas were fundamental. The Apollon Lisbon pilot experience and the ideas exchanged between the activities made a decisive contribution in this creation process.

People’s Voice Media: Working towards their goal to create a «Reuters of the community», PVM participated in the Manchester Pilot of APOLLON project as SME partner. Through their participation in APOLLON, PVM developed its flagship Social License Model® and have sold licenses to 15 organizations - 5 in the UK and 10 across Europe. Now, PVM is looking to develop their market in France (through APOLLON Partner - Issy Media), Italy, Spain, Turkey and Sweden.