Protoatlantic – A European accelerator program of the marine sector
Protoatlantic is an acceleration program of start-ups related to the marine/maritime sector which will be developed in Canary Island (Spain) in the next 3 years. It is funded by the Interreg Atlantic Area European Regional Development Fund.
This project will develop a whole model for the prototyping and exploitation of innovative ideas in the maritime sector. Taking into account the high costs of prototyping activities, we will narrow our proposal down to three sectors: Renewable Energy, Marine Robotics and Blue biotechnologies.
After the identification of ideas from the research community, start-ups and small and medium enterprises with product innovation capacity in the maritime sector, an acceleration program with a normed and structured process will be implemented. The workshops of the acceleration program followed by the mentoring will use a methodology that will cover everything from business models to market validation. Agile methodologies for the entrepreneurship will be tested, based in Lean start up, teampreneurship, design thinking or learning by doing.
Finally, eight start-ups will be chosen to be prototyped. In this way, an unique ecosystem in the Atlantic will be created, willing to address a co-creation paradigm with the local European start-ups communities and all the stakeholders.
The consortium is formed by 11 partners, Innovalia, EMERGE and the council of Las Palmas (Spain), The University and The Council of Cork (Ireland), The Institute of Engineering of Systems,Technology and Science (Portugal), Technopole Brest Iroise and Metropol of Brest (France), Marine South Limited and European Marine Energy (United Kingdom) and Happy Ventures (Morocco). EMERGE adds value with its expertise in the marine sector, its co-working space (Marine-Park) and its knowledge in prototyping.