”Your sneak preview of the future” is the slogan of Innovation Origins, and that’s just what we will highlight with our Start-up of the Week column. Over the past few days, five start-ups of the day have been featured and on Saturdays, we always choose the week’s winner.
Innovation Origins presents a Start-up of the Day each weekday.
We shall consider various issues such as sustainability, developmental phase, practical application, simplicity, originality, and to what extent they are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of UNESCO. They will all pass by here and at the end of the week, the Start-Up of the Week will be announced.
Coobly – From analog entrepreneur to key figure on the web
The internet has been a fairly large feature of society for about twenty years now. Companies have made grateful use of the new opportunities it offers right from the start. But how do you actually use these online options to bring in extra clients and revenue to your company? These things that are not generally dealt with during vocational training. After all, it is still a fairly complex web out there where you can easily get entangled. Or fail to catch a single fly if you haven’t spun it properly.
The start-up Coobly has been established for entrepreneurs who want to succeed online. Their target group? Professionals such as photographers, personal trainers or designers. A great site is vitally important for these entrepreneurs, yet creating one falls under a very different field of expertise. Leaving this to Coobly allows them to focus even more on their own professions.
Pulsup – Being circular is now de rigueur
Somebody’s dirty trash is somebody’s sustainable treat. This sounds like some saccharine cliché except that it forms the foundation for circular production processes. By recycling waste materials from company A into energy for company B, a sort of sustainable cycle is established. This in turn makes the earth a little greener.
Now this may sound all very well and good on paper, but in practice, it can sometimes be difficult to achieve. After all, where do you start? This is why Pulsup came into being. A Dutch start-up that aims to turn entire business parks into circular ecosystems. By not operating at a company level, but at an area level instead, this mindset will invariably become an integral part of the entire DNA of a new building site. This means that garbage trucks won’t have to pick up as much garbage. And energy suppliers won’t have to supply as much energy. A win-win situation!
InFarm – Regional products grown in the local supermarket
When you look around in the vegetable section of a supermarket, you can almost see the whole world pass by with all the various countries of origin. An amazingly diverse assortment? Absolutely. Sustainable? Not exactly … Those green beans from Morocco have to be transported to Europe by cargo ship. So, this makes the ecological footprint of some imported vegetables quite the Bigfoot. Not to mention their level of freshness. Vegetables that are on the shelves today are at least a few weeks old.
At the German start-up InFarm, they also thought that this could be done differently. Thanks to their special smart greenhouses housed in supermarkets, getting fresh vegetables into your home is now easier than ever. Since the harvest takes place in the supermarket itself, you can be sure that your vegetables are fresh every day. Due to the scale, cooperation with vegetable growers and the flexible logistics underlying it all, it’s now possible to have several crispy fresh vegetables in store.
The Drivery – Mobility in times of crisis
Although we are still in the middle of the first wave of the corona crisis, an unprecedented economic crisis is already looming on the horizon. Not a pleasant sight to behold. Such a lockdown has tremendous consequences, the magnitude of which is scarcely comprehensible. For start-ups, too, these are tough times with disappointing revenues while still having the same costs.
The rent or mortgage of their office space is a substantial expense for a lot of companies. Berlin-based start-up The Drivery wants to help self-employed people in the transport sector out of the fire. With their Buster Program, they are offering temporary office space in the historic Ullsteinhaus. This used to be the highest office building in Germany until 1957. The advantage of having so many clever entrepreneurs within a stone’s throw of each other is that an innovative interaction develops. Lower costs and the chance to enter into entirely new projects with colleagues who now also have the time to broaden their horizons. Never waste a good crisis!
CMR Surgical – In the surgical arms of a robot
Would you entrust your body to a pair of robot arms? It sounds a bit risky. Well, this will become more common in operating theaters over the next few years. Robots are getting smarter and smarter and are no longer only suited to rough production tasks. Versius, the robot from the start-up CMR Surgical, is a robotic surgeon who performs life-saving operations with its state-of-the-art precision motor skills.
Entrusting your whole body to a machine? No, that probably won’t happen for several decades. Versius acts as an assistant to a real, live surgeon. The robot is modular, so it has precisely the proper tools for any job. And the best thing about it? It never gets tired and it is very mobile. As long as someone is available to operate it, this surgical robot will save lives 24 hours a day. With these three extra arms around the operating table, surgeries can be completed faster and less painfully on patients.
Medical robots are not new, but this flexible, mobile, and modular model from these British scientists certainly is. Robotic surgery is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, CMR Surgical believes that this needs to be rolled out more and more over the next few years. Since we have witnessed over the past few months how indispensable good and efficient healthcare is, our editors believe that an incentive prize in the form of an IO trophy is more than warranted!
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