Mountain View, CA – July 25th 2019
July 25th took place the Demo Day of Imagine Silicon Valley 2019 at Google HQ, where the 12 Dreamers presented the 4 social innovation projects they have ideated over a month in a van cruising three states of the United States (California, Nevada and Arizona) and developed at the most innovative hub in the world, Silicon Valley.
Google opened its doors to the 12 Dreamers of the 9th edition of Imagine Silicon Valley to present the results of the projects they had been working on during the month of July. The 4 projects belonged to different fields: elder people, education, mental health and volunteering; but all of them have one thing in common, that is their willingness to solve some of the biggest challenges that our society is facing and make the world a better place.
Jordi Ortiz, our host and a Strategic and Growth Manager at Google, welcome the dreamers and the 200+ attendees that joined the Demo Day sharing his personal satisfaction that all the projects had a social purpose.
Cause it is true, we can’t ignore the fact that apart from exponential technologies, our world is also facing exponential problems that we need to start proposing solutions that can help us build a better world for our future generations.
The event was presented by Marta Ordeig, founder of Garage Stories and director ofImagine Silicon Valley for the last three years, and Javier Ideami, founder of Ideami Studios.
We actually had the honor of having Marc Bonavia, partner of Imagine and founder of Catalonia Exponential, that shared his views on the future and how we should we questioning ourselves not only the NOW and the NEW, but the NEXT in order to build successful products with a positive impact.
In order to tackle down these challenges, probably the biggest ones we had ever faced at Imagine Silicon Valley, we got together 12 brights minds, winners of different talent contests all over Spain, and brought them together into our innovation center in California. This year, for the second time, instead of spending the whole month in Silicon Valley as we used to do, we followed our favorite format inspired by the trips that Imagine has organized in different countries all over the world such as as Imagine Latam , or Imagine InAtlantic, where traveling has proven to reinforce the coexistence between the participants and transforms their diversity into a lever of innovation. By literally getting out of their comfort zone, they receive new sources of inspiration that lead them to create disruptive solutions.
For that reason, this year we started in Los Angeles (Kick-Off) where participants met for the first time. Once teams were formed, we took our vans and hit the road to get started with the Inspiration and Ideation phases of the Lombard Method along places such as the Route 66, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Mammoth Lake and Yosemite; till we reached our final destination, Silicon Valley.
Once we arrived, we settled down at our Creativity Center in San Mateo, working on the third (prototyping) and fourth (communication) phases of the Method. During this time we made the most of this unique ecosystem and visited some of the most innovative companies in the world (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, etc.), took official workshops at universities such as Stanford and received feedback from experts in innovation and technology.
One novelty of 2019’s Demo Day, is that we invited a wonderful jury of 7 international experts based in Silicon Valley to ask questions and give feedback to the teams in order to validate our prototypes and keep improving the projects for the final presentation that will take place in Barcelona October 3rd.
The jury members were:
- Bin Li – Founder US-China Social Innovation Consulting
- Felipe Lamounier – Partner & Board Member @StartupSE
- Angelika Blendstrup – Mentor@500startups & Singularity University Labs
- Jinxia Niu – Business manager for Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Research Institute
- Marc Bonavia: Silicon Valley Executive Director for Innovation & Investment relations between Catalonia and Western US
- Elodie de Marchi – Investment Strategy Manager at VMware
- Ignasi Mas – Senior Manager, IT SOX and Internal Controls
The challenges and the projects presented were:
Mental Health (Alliance Otsuka Lundbeck) – ¿How to reduce mental health stigma and help patients enter the job market?
The Dreamers Carlos Bort (Celera/ Banc Sabadell Foundation), Ana Valdés (Oviedo’s University/ Banc Sabadell Foundation) and Aleix Ordeig (Imagine Foundation), presented «MINDTAL», a platform with a radically different approach to recruiting that facilitates the matchmaking between companies and candidates with some type of mental health issue (mainly schizophrenia and psychosis) and offers companies the possibility to send challenges to the platform and employ people cost free for a short period of time. The main goal is to help people with mental health issues enter the job market by reducing the social stigma.
The general manager of Otsuka Spain, Concha Caudevilla, came all the way to San Francisco to attend the event and to share Otsuka’s experience during the innovation process and their work towards building a more equal society.
Elder People (Catalunya Emprèn/ 4YFN-MWC) – ¿How to prevent the dangers of seniors living alone and help them become more active and self confident?
The Dreamers Ainara Sarobé (MWC), Joan Tutusaus (MWC) and Miguel Robert (MWC) worked on <<AIDE>> an AI solutions that wants to be aware of the well being of seniors at home via senior-friendly sensors that are not stigmatizing. Aide can detect whether a senior user falls into the floor and activates a safety protocol that warns the closest neighbours to offer a first assistance before the medical service gets home.
It facilitates the empowerment of seniors by allowing them to be in control of their own safety and encourages neighbours to be more aware of the elder people living in their buildings creating a stronger human community.
Education (Imagine Foundation) – ¿How to empowers kids in risk of exclusion and empower them to be heard and seen?
The Dreamers Carla Marín (EDEM – Escuela de Empresarios/ Banc Sabadell Foundation), Manel Lao (Imagine Foundation) and Sandra García (Universidad de Alicante/ Banc Sabadell Foundation) worked on <<COPELIUS>> a peer to peer education platform that turns the tables around and creates a new CV around “How much have others learnt from you” instead of “How much have your learnt”. This project is the result of Imagine’s experience in a workshop in Iten, Kenya, where Imagine team realized that kids were more motivated to teach them things that to be taught, and that by teaching they were also learning themselves.
Copelius aims to build a worldwide platform where kids from all over the world can create their own educational videos (working in teams with the help of a mentor) that creates equal opportunities for all.
Volunteering (Audi) – ¿How to build stronger local communities?
The dreamers, Ana Navarro, Tzaitel Virgili and Gabriel Lettenstrom, were the winners of the of the 4th Edition of the Audi Creativity Challenge amongst +500 participating teams with their project <<WeLink.>>, which helps people that need help connect with others willing to do so. Favours can range from teaching, walking the dog, do the shopping, etc; and are targeted locally, despite the platform works globally. The main benefit for “volunteers” is that it adds value to their Linkedin CV by being able to trade their “volunteering” hours, a tool that many companies confirmed to be very helpful in a recruiting process.
The goal of WeLink is to humanize large cities and create stronger communities around us.
About Imagine:
Imagine is an Innovation Center founded by Xavier Verdaguer in the Silicon Valley of California in 2011. Imagine has developed and curated its own innovation methodology called Lombard Method, based on the principles of Design Doing (used by Start-ups) and applies it to solve the challenges that big corporations confront. Imagine organizes innovation trips where the participants (called Dreamers) develop disruptive solutions for challenges proposed by big companies like Audi, Ikea, Banco Sabadell, Suez, Cuatrecasas, Fluidra, Grupo Sura, Mediapro, etc. Nowadays Imagine develops innovation programs in different countries (Imagine Express, Imagine Latam, Imagine Africa, Imagine Italia, Imagine Japan, etc.). In Imagine we believe that a better world is possible. In order to develop solutions to the problems society faces, it is necessary to create diverse groups with shared values that follow a working methodology and entrepreneur attitude.
About Alliance Otsuka and Lundbeck:
Otsuka is a Japanese pharmaceutical company that was born 90 years ago with 2 main values: creativity and innovation to save lives. Nowadays Otsuka is present in many countries around the world, and we are honored to have Concha Caudevilla, General Manager Otsuka Spain, amongst us, who later will share her experience during this process. Lundbeck, a Danish pharmaceutical company that has been at the forefront of brain science for over 70 years specialized in neurological and psychiatric treatments.
http://www.otsuka-europe.com/es/
About 4YFN – Mobile World Capital:
A critical element of MWC, 4YFN underscores Barcelona’s position as a leading hub for digital entrepreneurship and connects the startup ecosystem globally. 4YFN offers unique connecting initiatives including insightful onstage talks, technical workshops, custom networking activities, community outreach and open innovation programmes to support startups, investors and companies to connect and launch new business ventures together.
About Audi Creativity Challenge:
The Audi Creativity Challenge is a competition in which we challenge you to transform the future of our society by developing your most creative ideas. How? Create a team of 3 companions and look for a good Driver that helps you to be better. Your challenge will be to find solutions to innovate in the education sector. If your idea exceeds all phases and ends as a winner, you will enjoy a unique experience in Silicon Valley to fully develop your project following the Lombard Method.
About Fundació Banc Sabadell:
The Banco Sabadell Foundation was established with the purpose of stimulating excellence and promoting knowledge and culture.
The objective of the Foundation is to promote outreach, training and research activities in the educational, scientific and cultural fields, as well as to encourage and support young talent. Throughout its existence, it has contributed to promote activities in these areas and has also established itself as the organizer of the prestigious Banco Sabadell Foundation Award for Biomedical Research and the Economic Research Foundation Award.
http://www.fundacionbancosabadell.com/