Technoport To Lead Userlab Startup Session Initiative


The global mission of Technoport is to help and support individuals and small teams to validate and bridge their ideas to success through three platforms: a business incubator, a coworking space and a fab lab. This week Technoport is organizing a userlab to facilitate the interaction of start-up companies with test users from different European regions. We also asked CEO Diego De Biasio and Project Manager Olivier Zephir to share the latest news of Technoport expansion and goals for this year.

You host a userlab startup session on the 26th, what is the purpose of this european initiative?

A userlab is a participative laboratory to support young start-up companies in the project development phase by interacting with users across Europe. The initiative is carried out under a European project (Interreg IVB) LILA (Living labs application for internationalization of start-up companies) uniting 6 regions of north-west Europe. The userlab allows start-up companies to test their new products and services across user groups from different EU countries so as to develop early adopters communities and to set optimal release and distribution strategies.

At Technoport, how people and companies can fine tune their ideas and get feedback? How do you accompany them?

At Technoport we run userlabs under focus group meeting format where start-up companies operate ideas, product and service prototypes demo to their target users. User feedback are captured during the demo by testing the prototypes value proposals against the user needs, desires and expectations. When user feedback are captured across the different north-west Europe countries of the LILA program it allows to a start-up company to fine tune product and service value proposals in accordance to the targeted market.

Technoport supports local as international start-up companies to internationalize from Luxembourg by providing specific tools such as online platforms and structured userlabs meetings to generate the start-up initial early adopters community.

How are things going at Technoport? You recently announced the opening of a new building in Foetz, does it mean Belval’s building is already full of start-ups?

The opening of the new buildings in Foetz has in fact no direct link with the development of the activities in Belval.

We added two new buildings in Foetz – one more administrative with office space and meeting rooms which is indeed an additional resource also for IT focused startups and one with 4 industrial halls addressing another type of entrepreneurs, namely the one’s that are developing industrial projects and need more space. But said this Belval is indeed getting quite full right now and the new administrative building in Foetz was a good resource for us to run our activities. We have a good rotation among startups and by the end of the year we should have renewed the totality of the startups that were hosted back in May 2012 when we moved to Belval.

What are the main Technoport‘s goals for 2015?

The main goal for us this year will be to actively scout the industrial entrepreneurs that would like to establish themselves in Luxembourg with innovative and technological projects. We aim at reaching a 75-80% occupation rate for our 16.000 sqm facilities. On top of that we have several other projects to be announced by due time – so stay tuned !

More info: http://technoport.lilaproject.eu/

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