Thank you for participating in a very successful Reverse Pitch event on Feb. 28, 2019.
Many of our region’s innovation ecosystem leaders came together to co-organize and support the Pittsburgh Reverse Pitch & Innovation Challenge on February 28, 2019, hosted by CMU's Corporate Startup Lab and held at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
Successful pitches from 5 corporations were made to an audience of 200+ innovators and entrepreneurs across a variety of disciplines, from AI/ML to life science backgrounds.
Innovation Challenges are currently being readied for launch by 4 corporations: Bayer, SAST (Bosch), Highmark Health and Rio Tinto. These challenges, which were first shared at the Reverse Pitch will be open for submissions on April 1 and run for approximately 8 weeks. The participating companies have pre-committed pilot funding for the best submissions that meet their requirements.
If you registered for the Reverse Pitch event, you're already on our list for Innovation Challenge announcements. If you'd like to be added to the email list, please use the contact form below.
Visit INNOVATIONCHALLENGEPGH.ORG
We're hosting 3 current challenges from: Highmark Health, Rio Tinto, Security and Safety Things
Bayer’s G4A program engages with the brightest minds both inside and outside the organization, identifying emerging trends and needs at the intersection of humans and technology and transforms these into new products solutions and experiences for patients and consumers. We connect with startups, young companies & the global digital health ecosystem. We crystallize the trends we identify from consumers, patients, healthcare professionals and startups into clear business opportunities and relevance for Bayer. We create new business and investment opportunities through Human Centered Design. Learn more at www.G4A.health.
G4A is looking to partner with digital health startups on a number of topics related to women’s health, oncology and cardiovascular innovation. Specific challenges for our 2019 program will be announced April 1st, 2019 and applications will be accepted through May 31st. Selected companies will have access to funding, mentorship, co-working space and, of course, projects! The challenge program includes two tracks:
- Growth, which is focused on early-stage companies with prototypes.
- Advance, focused on collaboration with later stage companies with product(s) in market.
Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health is a national health and wellness organization and America’s second largest integrated delivery and financing system with 2017 consolidated revenues of $18.3 billion. Through their diversified portfolio of leading businesses – including Highmark Blue-branded health plans, Allegheny Health Network, Visionworks, United Concordia Dental, HM Health Solutions and others – they passionately deliver on their mission to create a remarkable health experience, freeing people to be their best.
Highmark Health wants to change the way people engage with their health and create a customer experience beyond expectations. Their challenge will invite entrepreneurs to provide solutions within one of these opportunity areas:
- Point-of-care solutions that help patients and companions navigate and gain transparency in their care journey as they engage in a hospital visit.
- Better address individualized needs of their customers through a richer set of data to anticipate their needs, and deliver support and services that align with their preferred modes of engagement.
- Solutions that allow clinicians to clear administrative friction and create more time and space to do what they’re passionate about—caring for patients.
Philips is a global leader in health technology with more than 40 years of leadership in sleep apnea management, oxygen therapy, noninvasive ventilation and respiratory drug delivery. Philips strives to create meaningful innovations that improve people’s lives, and is committed to discovering and developing novel solutions to help people sleep and breathe better.
Philips is looking for direct-to-consumer sleep solutions with a focus on personalized content and intelligent coaching (or those that could be adapted to meet this need). Interesting applications range from engagement, tracking and monitoring to complete solutions for increased performance (optimized physical or cognitive performance). Focus is on digital and data-enabled solutions, including services and application of AI, predictive analytics and machine learning.
Rio Tinto is one of the largest metals and mining companies in the world. Iron ore is the dominant commodity, with meaningful contributions from aluminum, copper, diamonds, energy and industrial minerals. With operations on five continents, the bulk of its activities are centered in Canada and Australia.
Rio Tinto is seeking technological innovations in multiple opportunity areas including:
- An innovation challenge focused on optical sorting and separation technologies for ore grains (<1mm) in a continual feeding system.
- Also seeking AI/ML technology applications for process control (using large data sets) to predict and better control both batch and continuous production processes.
SAST is a fully owned but independent Bosch start-up headquartered in Munich, Germany. SAST stands for Security and Safety Things – Because safety and security are our highest priorities. With our revolutionary open IoT platform for security cameras, SAST enables a new generation of AI-based security apps. Bosch and SAST are cooperating closely with the Open Security and Safety Alliance to promote the adoption of SAST OS by a wide range of manufacturers and devices.
SAST is encouraging the development of new applications that leverage the benefits of SAST OS, a standard for security cameras based on Android (AOSP). Enabling technologies are also sought, including methods for improved object tracking and multi-camera tracking. Person recognition, pose estimation and action recognition will be important elements for consideration. SAST will be launching an innovation challenge focused on detecting and tracking customer activities in retail use cases.
Carnegie Mellon University | Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship:
The CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship is located inside of the Tepper School of Business, at 4765 Forbes Avenue in Oakland. The main entrance is located near the corner of Morewood and Forbes Avenues.
Parking at the CMU Swartz Center:
On-street parking is available, but very limited. The nearest public parking lot is the East Campus Garage (GPS Address: 5040 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213). Additional parking options are listed on the CMU Transportation website.