The project Business Plan – Sustainability in the focus
One of the main objectives of the Call4SMS project was to develop a business plan by the consortium partners. To generate the business model as a first step we needed to define what Smart Mobility Solution is. After several online sessions, our consortium developed the following definition: “Smart Mobility Solutions (SMS) are any implementation of disruptive mobility technologies in Urban Environment, which due to its unique innovative nature cannot be considered as the extension, renewal or replacement of the present urban mobility system of a given city.” To introduce Smart Mobility Solutions to cities, we identified three components:
Their CONCEPT must be PROVED both against predefined city needs and adequacy of citizen demand,
Their PERFORMANCE must be TESTED & CHECKED following proper method and involvement of citizens,
Their INTRODUCTION must be APPROVED/LICENCED by city authorities. This is essential to prove that the technology is mature, safe, and does not disturb the present flow of traffic in the city.”
This Definition allowed us to have a common understanding of the focus of our activities during the development of the common business model for the testing of Smart Mobility Solutions. As a result, we defined how this model can provide a unique value proposition for the target customers in Urban Environment (UE) (i.e. industry players willing to test their smart mobility solutions in urban environments).
The Business Model Platform consists of the three main components for the Urban Environment (UE) testing, which can serve as an EIT Urban Mobility Factory Tool, serving and supporting the development of Smart Mobility Solutions in the three phases of business creation: incubation (start-up), pilot testing (scale-up), business recovery (go-global). The first main idea behind the CALL4SMS business model is using the RIS3 methodology for establishing quadruple helix cooperation for smart specialization. The second main idea is defining the roles of participants and the structure of work packages based on the quadruple helix model. And the last, third main idea is to introduce a platform-based business model for financing, where the platform is closed from the bottom (i.e. only the city can upload its mobility data), but open from the top, so any third party can analyze and develop, solutions, applications for this data and test the results in a real-life city. This will bring the deployment of an innovative business development model whose benefits overcome the mobility sector as the impacts of the platform are going to change long term the way of planning city developments, so to be in line with the need for replicability and transferability.
The Business Model will provide them the opportunity to order a Pan-European scale state-of-the-art urban testing report, highlighting the differences in the west/central/north/east environment. Since our customers would like to sell their services/product on the whole EU market and beyond this information can be an essential key to their market success. To get this opportunity a unified price should be paid to the organization(s) operating the CALL4SMS platform, from which both the data providing cities, both the IP owners of the applied technologies can be paid. This price cannot be decided prior to the conclusion of the design phase of the project, but it can be said that this would be more favorable compared to the alternative solution of initiating pilot projects in all different EU urban environment settings. Further to this, preferential pricing will be offered for those SMS aiming city accessibility or pollution.
