Section ECONOMY
TOPIC

Eurobank S.A.

Innovation and Youth Entrepreneurship in Eurobank

Eurobank aims to promote innovation in its provided services and processes (regional competition FinTech Beyond Hackathon and internal competition “Innovation at the Epicentre”), support innovative youth entrepreneurship and improve sustainable opportunities in Greece, especially for young people (Programme egg – enter•grow•go).

The egg Programme is open to people with innovative ideas in all sectors of economic activity. In the competition FinTech Beyond Hackathon people of various fields participate, such as: software developer, marketer, designer and business developer as well as start up companies. The competition “Innovation at the Epicentre” is addressed to all Eurobank Group employees, irrespective of rank, position, experience or knowledge.

The egg Programme: Annual cycles of 12 months duration, 1st cycle launch in May 2013. The 7th cycle is in progress.

Beyond Hackathon: Launched in 2016 and implemented annually.

Innovation at the Epicentre: Launched in 2018 with the aim of being implemented every year.

The egg  Programme offers groups of young entrepreneurs and individuals an integrated framework of business incubation, acceleration and co-working space for one year. It also offers a range of supporting actions and tools to help them develop and accelerate their business plans into complete marketable products and services.

The Programme is made up by two distinct and supplementary support platforms of innovative entrepreneurship:

  • The “Start-Up” Platform, which is addressed to business teams or startups (up to 3 years), aims to support innovation at early stage incubation
  • The new platform egg Scale-Up is addressed to more mature startups which look for acceleration of their product development, sales increase and the next round of financing. The Scale up platform is the advanced business accelerator of egg-enter.grow.go.

The main benefits of the Program are:

  • Building infrastructure with fully functional and well-equipped co-working office spaces for the entire period of participation in the Programme.
  • Mentoring by distinguished and successful entrepreneurs representing prominent sectors of the economy and science.
  • Supporting “one-stop-shop” services in addressing key issues related to the business operation and startup support of each participating team.
  • Business training ("bootcamp") during the entire period of the “grow” stage of the Programme.
  • Financial tools and business networking to support business operation and development of the new teams and strengthen their financial sustainability during the “incubation” within the Programme.

In parallel the egg  Programme is combined with other Bank programmes for businesses such as “the Extroversion Programme” and the Exportgate international trade portal.

The Beyond Hackathon Competition aims to encourage, cultivate and promote open innovation in the sector of FinTech (Financial Technology) financial services. For 48 hours the participating teams collaborate and develop products and services, which improve customer bank experience, while in the end they present their ideas in the Panel (entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists and senior executives of Eurobank) in order to claim for one of the cash prizes of the Competition.

The internal competition «Innovation at the Epicentre» aims to promote a creative dialogue in the Organization and lead to new solutions, activating the talents and ideas of employees and promoting the importance of collaboration and creative thinking.

The competition’s 4 key pillars:

  • New products and services
  • Internal processes
  • Employee  experience
  • Customer experience

The participants submit a short description of their idea, which is evaluated by the organizational committee, which selects the best 8 ideas.  The short-listed teams have the opportunity to live a constructive entrepreneurial experience during the three day Innovation Lab, where they learn how to develop their idea, evolve it originally and present it in the correct way, with the support from mentors and participation in special workshops.

Following the ideas’ evaluation by the organizational committee, the 3 winners are selected.

The initiative relates to the following Sustainable Development Goals: 1, 8, 9

The egg Programme: Designed and implemented in collaboration with Corallia).

Beyond Hackathon: The competition takes place in partnership with Found.ation and the Cube Workspace M.I.K.E..

Innovation at the Epicentre: Organized and implemented in collaboration with the Found.ation.

The egg Programme: 4 people

Beyond Hackathon: More than 50 employees of the Bank either provide mentoring services to the participants or participate in the Organizational or Judging Panel.

Innovation at the Epicentre: Voluntary participation of 197 employees.

The egg Programme: Participations from all over Greece.

Beyond Hackathon: Participations from Athens, other regions and abroad .

Innovation at the Epicentre: Participations from all over Greece.

The egg Programme has established itself as one of the most complete business acceleration programmes in the country  with tangible results in Greece and abroad. Following the completion of the Programme’s six (6) cycles:

  • 800 individuals have been welcomed at egg.
  • 500 young entrepreneurs have received support.
  • 200 business teams have been included in the Programme.
  • 120 business teams have become companies.
  • 31 start ups have applied for patents.
  • 56 companies have travelled abroad.
  • 90 synergies have been developed among companies of egg alumni.
  • 62 companies have generated €3.5 million in turnover.
  • 26 start ups have received over €10 million in equity funding
  • 25 start ups have received €1.6 million in financing from Eurobank.
  • €75,000 have been distributed by Eurobank as cash prizes to the egg companies.
  • €70,000 have been donated by the egg teams to charity.

Beyond Hackathon: It is the first regional competition Hackathon in Greece that focuses on the sector of FinTech and the results of the 3 successful events until today are the following:

  • 7 innovative ideas, services and products have been awarded
  • 8 cash prizes and 1 special prize have been awarded
  • 72 teams have participated in the 3 events of the competition
  • More than 320 individuals signed up from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates.

Innovation at the Epicentre: in the first competition:

  • 96 proposals submitted
  • 197 employees  participated
  • 8 short-listed proposals participated in a three-day Innovation Lab where they had the opportunity to attend workshops, receive mentor guidance and present their ideas
  • 4 of them were awarded

 

The egg is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programme of Eurobank Group for the support of Youth- Innovative Entrepreneurship. Eurobank efficiently helps the evolution and the future of greek economy with initiatives and vision.

The Beyond Hackathon Competition helps finding new ideas and applications for the provision and use of financial services and offers the participating teams the opportunity to collaborate with Eurobank in order to develop their product.

Through «Innovation at the Epicentre», Eurobank highlighted innovation as one of its values, motivating employees for thinking out of the box:

  • 197 employees responded to the call
  • 96 ideas, able to improve or strengthen the 4 pillars, were submitted
  • 1 idea, among those emerged, proceeded to implementation