Innovation Origins: European news platform on innovations based on E52 Eindhoven fundament
First branch office in Munich launched today
E52 disappears, Innovation Origins (IO) appears.
What remains the same: every day the most relevant stories about innovations and their inventors trying to solve the big problems of today and tomorrow. And about the business that lies behind it.
What is changing: from a local platform (E52) focused on Brainport Eindhoven, a European network of local innovation sources is gradually being created. The first step in this direction is being taken today with the start of IO Munich, which will be filled with content next to IO Eindhoven. Overarching the local sites, a European umbrella platform is created, containing the most interesting and relevant innovation news, separated from its original location. New branches of Innovation Origins will be created when our organisation is strong enough based on its existing activities. The roll-out will focus on regions that stand out because of their innovative character.
The name
Innovation Origins’ ambition is to grow into an internationally operating organisation that specialises in the story of innovation. Through daily articles on innovationorigins.com, but also with events, newsletters, WhatsApp services, books, newspapers, elections and talk shows. With local relevance and global impact – publications will therefore always be in both the local language and in English. As a result, visitors can link the innovators from their own environment to developments on a global scale. Those who visit Innovation Origins regularly can be sure that they will keep up with all the important innovations that determine our world of tomorrow: IO points the way to the source of innovation – hence the new name.
Journalism
Innovation Origins is a fully independent journalistic platform, which sees it as its task to provide factual and well-founded information. In order to achieve this goal as effectively as possible, three layers of reliability are always taken into account for the content of IO. The first layer consists of the reporters and editors responsible for the articles: they will observe all journalistic rules in the creation of their productions, including transparency about any interests. The second layer is that of technology: Innovation Origins has entered into a partnership with Katalysis, a start-up that aims to promote verification of the facts by means of blockchain technology. IO also works with curation and aggregation tools that facilitate comparison of its own content with other known reliable information. The third and final layer of reliability is the audience: users of Innovation Origins are consistently invited to add their additions or improvements.
Business Models
Innovation Origins is convinced that its mission – to discover, tell and spread the story of innovation – is best achieved if the online content is always available free of charge. This applies to consumers, to any companies involved, as well as to other media that want to republish our stories. Money is earned in various other ways:
Added Value Journalism: a revenue model developed by E52 in which companies, governments, and other organisations that have an interest in the story told by IO provide the funding for this on a structural or incidental basis. This is done with due respect for the independence of IO’s editors.
Events: at each location IO organises events that fit the central theme (innovation) in the local context.
Books: Rebundling of previously published content.
Advertisements: IO’s specific target group enables targeted advertising.
Labour market: IO expects to be able to play a connecting role between employer and potential employees due to the large shortage of personnel in the innovation sector.
Newsletters/clippings: on request, specific content streams can be developed based on a specific interest of a company, a sector or a government agency.
Donations: users will regularly be tempted to make donations. Here too, Katalysis will deliver the technology – whereby each donation will be fairly distributed among the people who have been involved in the creation of a specific article: reporter, editor-in-chief, translator, illustrator, etc.
Commissioned content: The expertise of IO editing can also be used for commercial assignments. The result of this will not be published on the IO platforms but can benefit from the knowledge and skills of their editors.
