Sogeti Innovation Accelerator 2017

The Sogeti Innovation Accelerator 2017 is a global program of inspiration, imagination and innovation bringing together a passionate community of technologists and practitioners from around the world to design and create novel IoT-based, mixed reality experiences and intelligent systems that can deliver real-world impact and market value. The Innovation Accelerator is the IoT Hackathon reimagined, taking the best elements from the highly successful program last year and adding new accelerator services to enhance the experience for participants.

Innovation Accelerator 2017 Design Themes

Innovation Accelerator participants will be guided through Design Thinking creative spaces to innovate on the following major themes:

• Smart Cities
• Smart Buildings
• Smart Energy Grids
• Connected Health
• Smart Manufacturing
• Immersive Retail
• Connected Transportation

Using human-centered design thinking, participants will learn and apply highly effective design techniques to develop breakthrough concepts that transform into catalysts for disruptive business models thru advanced prototyping creative flows. Accelerator teams will leverage the Internet of Things as a ubiquitous computing ecosystem in which intelligent systems and immersive experiences can be designed, developed and deployed to advance a future, better world centered on these themes.

Innovation Accelerator Services and Ecosystem

The Innovation Accelerator is supported by services and an ecosystem to deliver a unique program experience for Accelerator participants.

Virtual teaming services support team formation, collaboration, production, and gamification. These services are designed to help teams discover talent and create a hackathon-style dynamic in the Accelerator.

The Accelerator’s design thinking platform creates design spaces and flows using workspaces and templates. The platform enables the startup of hackathon-style design challenges based on the themes in the program. These services drive the ideation in the Accelerator. Learning services and prototyping assets are offered to assist Accelerator teams in rapid iterative development of their concepts. The main objective is to facilitate Accelerator teams producing high impact concepts with streamline effort while learning fast and pivoting if necessary.

Accelerator services provide guidance on business model design, product/market fit, pitch development as well as team building. The services are valuable in determining market viability as well as potential for disruption and value creation. To take the new products and services to market, Accelerator teams will have opportunity to distribute and showcase their concepts throughout the global AIE network as well as Sogeti sales channels.

The Innovation Accelerator program is supported by an extensive platform ecosystem and vendor partnerships. These partnerships provide funds to operate the Accelerator as well as produce joint sales and marketing opportunities. Platform partners also contribute technology SMEs to help Accelerator teams with prototyping.

Innovation Accelerator Platforms

The Innovation Accelerator platform portfolio is selected to enable:
• IoT intelligent systems, products, and services
• Immersive mixed reality experiences
• Disruptive and innovative machine learning services

The Accelerator curriculum provides offerings to give teams knowledge for incorporating most of these platform technologies into their designs. Accelerator teams are free to use technologies not included in the curriculum. In addition to the curriculum offerings, additional curated content will be available on Accelerator TV, the program’s knowledge portal. Teams will find Accelerator TV to be a valuable resource for design and prototyping materials on all platforms.

Some of the Accelerator curriculum offerings to support these platforms include:
• Design Thinking for Innovation
• Maker IoT Prototyping
• Innovating on the Azure IoT Platform
• Innovating on the IBM Watson IoT Platform
• Innovating on the Amazon IoT Platform
• Innovating on the Google Cloud Platform
• Designing Innovative Services with Machine Learning
• Cross-Platform Mobile Applications with Xamarin
• Mixed Reality Experiences with Unity on Google Cardboard
• Mixed Reality Experiences with Unity on Microsoft HoloLens

Xamarin

Innovation Accelerator teams will learn to create cross-platform mobile applications using Xamarin that interface with their IoT solutions by integrating embedded systems and cloud services.  Teams can create innovative mobile applications that surface insights as well as control remote sensors and actuators implementing the IoT feedback mechanism.  Additionally, Accelerator teams have access to Xamarin’s integration and support for IoT devices as well as machine learning and cognitive APIs.

Maker IoT and Embedded Systems

While many good ideas for Innovation Accelerator concepts may not include a hardware component, some will, and the Accelerator Services team will work with participants to enable easy inclusion of hardware components and embedded software into their prototypes.

For Innovation Accelerator teams with no hardware experience, the Accelerator Services team will offer assistance in getting the hardware and embedded software components up and running.  Teams with members who are already familiar with the maker IoT culture will have access to content produced by the Accelerator Services team intended to stretch design thinking into new areas.

The goal of the Maker IoT and Embedded Systems component of the Innovation Accelerator program is to remove barriers and increase feasibility for creating real-world IoT products that contribute to innovation impact.

Machine Learning

Accelerator teams will be enabled to incorporate machine learning services into their designs.  Cognitive services like machine learning facilitate humans and machines working better together by complementing each other since humans and machines are better at different things.  Humans are very good at handling unpredictable dynamics with their capacity for common sense and situational awareness.  Machines, on the other hand, are great at performing significant amounts of calculations and analyzing vast amounts of data quickly.  Teams will be leveraging the best of both human-machine capabilities to design novel concepts for problems that could benefit from this hybrid approach.

AR/VR/MR

AR/VR/MR is a new component in the Accelerator to enable teams to design innovative interactivity modes in the human-machine-data interface for surfacing insights and affecting the real world.  AR/VR/MR amplifies human potential for enhancing actual reality and provides a powerful medium to effectively manage the vasts amount of IoT data.  Data can no longer be maintained with only spreadsheets.  AR/VR/MR is the medium that can serve as the visualization canvas for the variety, velocity and volume of IoT data.  With the combination of the human-machine interface and the visualization canvas, Accelerator teams can tap into AR/VR/MR’s significant potential for value creation and innovation.

Innovation Accelerator 2017 Timeline

The Accelerator program will run over the course of a three-month period, like a Silicon Valley accelerator. Starting in August, the Accelerator will go thru key phases such as team formation, design and ideation, prototyping, final builds and pitch presentations. Throughout the program, Accelerator teams are supported via Accelerator TV, Slack communications, office hours and face-to-face events held to bring teams together.

A live multi-city simulcast event will be scheduled toward the completion of the prototyping phase where all Accelerator teams will be able to participate from their respective locations to assemble final builds.

Accelerator teams will produce a PowerPoint pitch and demo video describing their innovation and business model. Judges will use these pitches to determine the top teams during a judging period which occurs shortly after the livecast event.

The Accelerator program culminates with the top teams being represented at the AIE in San Francisco for final pitch and demo presentations to a select audience consisting of executives, platform partner representatives and AIE management. Awards will be presented to the winning teams in a ceremony at the finale of the AIE event.

Innovation Accelerator Coordination Team

The Innovation Accelerator program is supported by SogetiLabs and a dedicated global group of innovators. These individuals will be working hard to provide all program participants with the most valuable, unique and rewarding experience possible during the three-month journey.

Joo Lee, Accelerator Executive
David Yancey, Accelerator Ecosystem Coordinator
Sergio Compean, Accelerator Services
Michael Pumper, US Accelerator Lead
Chris Forsberg, European Accelerator Lead
Manisha Rao, India Accelerator Lead
Mike Buob, AIE Coordinator
Richard Fall, IoT Maker SME
Hines Vaughan, Xamarin SME and Accelerator TV Administrator
Alec Lisy, AR/VR/MR SME
Ashley Gibbens, Curriculum Coordinator

Additional platform SMEs will also be available to support the program. For inquiries or sponsorship opportunities, contact Sergio Compean (sergio.compean@us.sogeti.com) or David Yancey (david.yancey@us.sogeti.com).

Contributors: David Yancey, Michael Pumper, Richard Fall, Chris Forsberg, Manisha Rao, Hines Vaughan, Alec Lisy