Highlights from Martel: review of 2016 and 2017 outlook

2016 has been an intense, surprising and succesful year for Martel Innovate. A few major highlights:

• 4 new people on board and 1 new office opened in Lugano (Switzerland)
• 10 accepted H2020 proposals out of 18 submitted in total between January and April
• 4 new H2020 projects started between September and November 2016
• 1 EC tender and 9 H2020 proposals submitted since August 2016 (pending results)
• Successfully bootstrapped the Martel Lab as one of the core Lines of Business of the company
• Consolidated the success of the Martel Consulting and Martel Media LoBs
• Animated 15 Twitter channels and managed 13 web sites across 11 ongoing EC projects 

But beyond numbers, the credibility and reliability of Martel’s team and services, which has been reconfirmed across a number of projects and collaborations also outside of the European R&D context, remains the top result for this year.

“Martel’s most precious asset is our team: a cohesive group of qualified and committed professionals, sharing the same business and ethical values.” affirm Martin Potts and Monique Calisti at the guide of the company. “The capability to flexibly combine Consulting, Lab & Media skills and expertise allows us to adapt the recipe to the specific business case and remain recognised innovation leaders with partnerships spanning the European and international scene.”

Lots of lessons learned along the journey, but for sure worth to highlight is that 2016 has proven:

• A small team can do big things: without competent, qualified and committed people there is no future!
• Prioritized and focused efforts are key to success: to be able to proritise and select business opportunities is crucial to ensure top-quality service delivery, especially with a small team.
• Service offering diversification is paying off: the decision to open up a new line of business specifically focused on R&D in the areas of cloud computing, IoT and 5G primarily allows us to stay competitive and improve also the Consulting and Media services we offer to our customers and partners.
• The direct Swiss funding for H2020 has pros and cons, both for Martel and for the consortia we are involved in. While impact on EC budgets is mitigated by the Swiss government participation to our financial costs, there is additional admin/reporting overhead and less flexibility to involve non Swiss-resident employees.
  

Turning the 2016 page and looking ahead to new challenges “Martel Innovate started working full rythm already in early days of this new year to ensure top quality results to all ongoing and upcoming ventures.” confirms Federico M. Facca, Head of Martel Lab.

To start with 4 new people joined in January 2017 and 2 more will be part of Martel Innovate’s team as of beginning of February. All the new team members have a strong and international background that will allow strenghthening Martel’s Innovate positioning and offering in the ICT innovation landscape.

With January, also, a new wave of EC collaborations for Martel: 6 H2020 R&D projects spanning across the following domains: Next Generation Internet, Smart Cities, IoT, Media & Content Management, Wireless, 5G, Satellite Communication, Digital Social Innovation, FIWARE, Large-scale Experimentation, and International Cooperation. In these projects, Martel’s main roles include: Project Coordinator, Support to the Coordinator, Leader of Dissemination and Communication activities, Key R&D Contributor.

“The main goals for 2017” adds Monique “are to ensure we continue delivering top quality services to all our customers and partners, while carefully managing the growth Martel is experiencing. A major growth like the one we’ve been going through during these last months, requires focused efforts to be sustainable. We need the new team members to be rapidly integrated into our business and philosophy, while following up on new opportunities that will take us even further.”

So plenty of challenges ahead for this 2017, but, as usual, the spirit is high. Continue following Martel and don’t hesitate to contact us for new ventures together.