Telecom Italia has announced it has supported the ‘Startup Europe Partnership’ (SEP) as a Corporate Member.
SEP is the EC programme for leading new technology start-ups.
One of the key goals of SEP is to support the growth of European start-ups and create European companies in the field of new technologies so they could compete globally.
The initiative is also aimed at large companies interested in taking up the challenges represented by digital start-ups, opening up their procurement, investment and acquisition channels, it says.
The founding members include Telefonica, Orange, BBVA, investment funds such as European Investment Fund, which is a part of the European Investment Bank Group, and European universities including Cambridge University, the IE Business School and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society.
“Telecom Italia is proud to be the first Corporate Member of the Startup Europe Partnership. It confirms the Company’s commitment to stimulate technological innovation through startups and to increase awareness in the European entrepreneurial fabric of all the opportunities of the digital era,” says Salvo Mizzi, Telecom Italia’s head of Digital Market Development and originator of the Working Capital project.
“We are very pleased that Telecom Italia has joined in this important European initiative that brings together big companies and universities with the aim of supporting a wave of innovative startup companies across the continent that are able to succeed at international level,” adds Isidro Laso Ballesteros, Head of Startup Europe, European Commission.
The Startup Europe Partnership, coordinated by the Italo-American Mind the Bridge foundation, with British bank Nesta and German organisation The Factory, is one of the 6 actions for entrepreneurship defined as part of the “Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan” (European Commission, January 2012) and is designed to implement some of the key recommendations of the Startup Manifesto.