BioBoosters – This is how we solve business challenges in the Baltic sea region

The BioBoosters project connects 9 regions with strong innovation ecosystems in the bioeconomy, with the goal of facilitating and creating new business opportunities for companies in the Baltic Sea region. The method for achieving this is through Hackathons.

A total of 18 Hackathons will be organized within the project. Each Hackathon will be led by a leading bioeconomy company that provides a challenge, focusing on finding business opportunities for unused side streams or on system optimization – making better use of energy, raw materials, or residual flows in a value-creating way. The challenges will come from Sweden, Finland, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

What is a Hackathon?

A Hackathon is an innovation competition that begins with an open call where a company presents a challenge they would like help solving. Teams that believe they have a solution are invited to present their ideas. Based on these submissions, the most promising teams are selected to continue and receive mentoring support in relevant fields to refine their ideas. The process can also include team-building activities to strengthen the teams’ overall skills.

The Hackathon concludes with a live event where the teams pitch their solutions to a jury of experts – both from the company that presented the challenge and from the mentor network.

Learn more about Hackathons and the process here.

What’s in it for the winners?

Each challenge is open to companies, innovators, start-ups, and researchers who want to contribute their solutions. The winning team will be offered a form of collaboration with the challenge company. Depending on the maturity of the proposed solution, this may take the form of a business partnership, a joint project, or a pilot to test and develop the idea further.

Project funders: