Dear Colleagues, Partners and Friends of EIT Digital,
2018 has been another busy and exciting year in which we have further expanded the reach, activities and impact of EIT Digital. A big thanks to all of you for your continuous efforts and support! In all domains, ecosystem development, innovation and entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial education, we have seen growth.
Our ecosystem has welcomed over 60 new partners bringing the total to over 200. We have intensified our operations across Europe resulting amongst others in the decision to open new locations in Scotland and Portugal. We further intensified our activities across regions in Europe via our ARISE program to support regional innovation. Our annual conference and partner event in September generated a record interest and was very well received. We brought our results to Europe via a coordinated series of Innovation Days in our Co-Location Centers at the end of the year. Our continued efforts to increase consistency and enhance visibility has delivered a much stronger EIT Digital brand.
Our Innovation and Entrepreneurship activities have been intensified with an even stronger emphasis on impact and sustainability. Our innovation activities deliver products and services to the market and are getting increasingly successful in procurements. Our Accelerator has seen a successful Challenge and increasing intake of scale-ups. It has been pivotal in the conclusion of several customer and investor deals for our scale-up portfolio. Also, we introduced the EIT Digital DeepHack with already two successful editions in Berlin and San Francisco.
Our entrepreneurial education programs have witnessed a strong growth in 2018 and welcomed a record master school intake of 400 freshmen at the kick-off event in Paris and delivered a record of 250 digital entrepreneurs at the graduation ceremony in Eindhoven. Our industrial doctoral school is witnessing a growing involvement of our industry partners and expanded significantly its impact. Finally, our professional school delivered its first cross-Atlantic program with UC Berkeley.
I would like to thank all of you for your continued engagement in working for a strong digital Europe. Each and every one of you makes our success possible with your passion, dedication and “can do” attitude. This is the foundation that gives us confidence to further step up our results and impact in the coming years.
Enjoy the season break, take good care of yourself and your loved ones. I look very much forward to see you back in January, for what we wish to become a happy and prosperous New Year full of digital innovation.
Willem Jonker
CEO EIT Digital
