Manchester’s CityVerve Smart Tech

Manchester's CityVerve programme launches smart tech competition with the aim to find technology solutions for public sector challenges.

21:46 01 February 2018

Manchester CityVerve programme has launched Open Innovation, a tech competition that encourages SMEs to come up with technology solutions that can address a handful of challenges faced by the healthcare, energy and transport sectors.

 

Eight SMEs will be chosen to take part in an eight-week initiative to combine data and technology in dealing a number of problems faced by the public sector.

 

The competition is run by Cisco and Manchester Science Partnerships, a strategic group of local authorities and universities. Winners will be given a £5,000 grant to showcase their technology to industry leaders at a CityVerve demo data later in the year.

 

Nick Chrissos, the director of innovation at Cisco in Europe, said: “Without collaboration, any effort to solve the challenges facing society today fails at the first hurdle. No one organisation can truly do it alone.

 

“The answer lies in co-innovation, and this approach is fundamental to the Open Innovation challenges. This is an exciting opportunity not only for our country’s best SMEs to test their technology, but for us to work with them.”