Telecom Italia is the first company in Europe to support the Startup Europe Partnership (SEP) as a Corporate Member. The initiative was heralded on 23rd January this year in Davos by the Vice President of the European Commission Neelie Kroes and is aimed at large companies interested in taking up the challenge of innovation represented by digital startups, opening up their procurement, investment and acquisition channels (download here the press release).
The announcement was made yesterday by Salvo Mizzi, Telecom Italia’s head of Digital Market Development and originator of the Working Capital project, during the first official event (Matching Event) of the SEP organised in Naples as part of the Go Global Now event.
I soci fondatori del programma europeo sono Telefonica, Orange e BBVA, il Fondo Europeo per gli Investimenti (FEI) e alcune delle più importanti università europee (Cambridge University, IE Business School e Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society).
Founding members of SEP are Telefonica, Orange and BBVA the European Investment Fund and some of the leading European universities (Cambridge University, the IE Business School and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society).
The Startup Europe Partnership, coordinated by the Italo-American Mind the Bridge foundation, with British bank Nesta and German organisation The Factory, is one of the 6 actions for entrepreneurship defined as part of the “Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan” (European Commission, January 2012) and is designed to implement some of the key recommendations of the Startup Manifesto (visit SEP page in the EU Commission’s site).
The initiative will be officially launched on 22nd May in Brussels, in the presence of leading members of the European Commission, President Josè Manuel Barroso and Vice President Kroes.
