Hannovermesse 2019 start-up/scale-up event

Important results from the project

Several of the German cooperations have shown an interest in following up Hannover with visits to Sweden to meet more startups, and to explore deeper collaboration with the Swedish innovation ecosystem. Many of the corporate delegates have previously experienced going to Israel and Silicon Valley to meet startups and have been pleasantly surprised and impressed by the quality of the Swedish startups they were able to meet.

Expected long term effects

Of the 128 matchmaking meetings conducted, about 45% have led to in-depth dialogues on collaborations, which is a very good outcome. A number of pilots have already been launched and more are planned for 2019. Three-four of the start-up companies are now planning to establish in Germany, primarily through sales recruitment.

Approach and implementation

It took significantly longer than expected to engage the 21 German corporates. Once they had committed to join, it took time for them to decide which startups they wanted to meet because they involved several internal colleagues in the selection process. On the other hand, the thorough approach led to very high quality meetings. Therefore, many of the participating startups were accepted to the delegation before their meetings were confirmed, and some startups thus only got 1-2 meetings, while others got up to 8 meetings. Nevertheless, the overall outcome was really good.