EIT ICT Labs establishes Silicon Valley Hub to build a bridge between Bay Area and EU ecosystems

Written By Ana Martinez

The Client

EIT ICT Lab is a leading European organization for Innovation and Education.

The Objectives

EIT ICT Lab was interested in building stronger connections to Silicon Valley. While the organization has wide ranging interests, for this project we focused on 4 focus areas:

  • Future of education

  • Urban life and mobility services

  • Investing in entrepreneurship

  • Software defined networks

The Solution

Our team performed a market landscape and analysis to educate EIT ICT Lab on the leading Silicon Valley industry and academia stakeholders in their 4 key focus areas.

The Outcome

Our efforts resulted in multiple partnerships with leading Silicon Valley players that aided 25 European startups of the EIT Digital Accelerator program with their plans to access the US market and to get financing from US investors.

Ana Martinez

Ana has extensive experience in corporate innovation. She has helped over 25 Global 1000 corporations from a wide range of industries develop new business strategies using the latest technologies in the market and has also led 70+ partnerships between corporations and startups. Ana has worked with corporate clients such as Nestle, PepsiCo, Volkswagen, Procter & Gamble, JetBlue, Mizuho, BP, Repsol, Nissan, Avis Budget Group, Magna, Renault, Ferguson, Allstate, GrainCorp, Givaudan, BSM, Griffith Foods, AGC, IAG, among others.

As a member of Rabobank’s first Innovation Team, Ana successfully launched Foodbytes, a pitch competition and networking platform that connects the top food and agriculture startups, corporates and investors. With 15 global pitch competitions, 260+ startup pitches and 4700+ attendees, Foodbytes has become the top startup pitch competitions in the food and agriculture industries. She also launched TERRA, a food and agriculture accelerator that brings together the industry’s most disruptive startups and leading corporations to fuel industry innovation and strategic partnerships.

Ana graduated from the University of California Berkeley with a major in Economics. She was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and loves to play golf!

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