HIVESOUND, vilisto and Fristam win Hamburg Innovation Awards
The Hamburg Innovation Summit 2024 scored with a mixture of the new and the established. One of the new features was the location in the Oberhafen district, which offered plenty of space for an expanded programme. The concept of bringing together business, science and politics and the presentation of the Hamburg Innovation Awards as the final highlight were tried and tested.
The Hamburg Innovation Summit as a stage for politics
One of the main tasks of the Hamburg Innovation Summit is to showcase the Hanseatic city as an important centre of innovation. The density of political celebrities was correspondingly high. Right at the beginning, Science Senator Katharina Fegebank spoke about future projects such as Science City Bahrenfeld and the leading role in quantum computing, and later presented the Hamburg Innovation Awards. Senator for Economic Affairs Dr Melanie Leonhard had previously presented the audience award to casuu, a startup that offers virtual language and professional training to non-native-speaking medical professionals. casuu was also one of the stops on the press tour of Hamburg's First Mayor Dr Peter Tschentscher, who visited the booth of the DESY research facility and informed himself about the connecting of the business clusters.
The winners of the Hamburg Innovation Awards
At times, up to six programme items took place simultaneously, so the guests were spoilt for choice. However, the Hamburg Innovation Awards ceremony had no competition on the programme; all the attention was focused on the winning teams in three categories. The finalists - you can find an overview here - had already had to pitch in front of juries a good a fortnight ago, but they were only informed of the results at the summit. In the IDEA category for startups in the pre-foundation phase, HIVESOUND came out on top with an app that provides information on the health status of bee colonies. The decisive factor here was the high degree of innovation and originality of the concept.
The prize in the START category went to vilisto, a startup that has a long history with the Hamburg Innovation Summit. The company, which had only just been founded at the time, first presented its smart thermostats at the event in 2016. Since then, vilisto has won many awards and customers with its digital heat management for non-residential buildings and employs more than 90 people. And the last financing round in 2023 raised 5 million euros. The anew award was therefore only logical. Finally, in the WACHSTUM (Growth) category, the prize went to the 115-year-old company Fristam, which continues to set innovative standards with its stainless steel pumps.
