iForum, Innovation by Grenoble Alpes
About this good practice
The iForum, created 25 years ago, was the first investment event organized by a local authority to act as a supporting actor for SMEs in seeking investment.
The event takes place during 2 days in the Grenoble Alpes Congress area, it is financially fully supported by the Metropole for all participants and exhibitors. It gathers around 500 participants each year. It targets all local and regional actors and players of the innovation.
A real governance has been implemented to insure its implementation through an organization committee as well as a investors’ committee.
In details, this investment business is implemented around 3 axis : 1. an inspiring conference given by renowned local researcher linked to the economic current conjuncture
2. a venture event where preselected innovative start-ups directly meet international and national investors via B2B meetings, business networking and pitches sessions. The investors are international. The selection of the start-ups is organized 3 months prior the event. An iForum award is given during the event to the most promising and innovative start-ups according to them.
3. a showroom presenting the 10 last innovations developed by local actors coming from local laboratories and research infrastructures.
Throughout the years, the iForum has adapted itself to fit with current SME’s economic needs. Today this practice is a real promotion tool for the territory to be seen, as a place maker for innovation and for SME’s to create business.
Resources needed
The total amount of the event is about 170k€ + one person is dedicated full time to the whole organization and 2 other persons half time during the preparation phase. This year the iForum has been integrated to a bigger regional business even called Tech&Fest therefore the budget has doubled.
Evidence of success
The iForum is a real showcase to promote regionally and internationally that we are pioneer in certain innovative domains. Since 1998, 410 projects have been presented to venture capitalists. These companies have generated more than 4700 jobs. At least 150 start-ups have raised funds since the creation of this event for an amount of more than 1.5 billion euros. This particular year, considering the association with Tech&Fest, the whole event gathered more than 15 000 visitors.
Potential for learning or transfer
It is an even that can be transferable. It is a real promotion tool for an innovative ecosystem to be seen as such, it also supports start-ups and innovative projects to emerge, to be known and to scale up thanks to the intervention of investors physically present. It demands to work and gather each innovation actor from the ecosystem and to set up the 3 pillars of the event: inspiring conferences, a showroom space dedicated to laboratory phase projects and 20 present innovative SME’s booth in the phase of investment seeking phase. We do even think that the name could be licensable through different countries. The iForum could also have a European version of which the event could gather all innovative ecosystem from a European consortium like SKALE2CT. It could be very beneficial for our own start-ups. Of course, as it is an event, it demands some communication and dissemination skills from the staff working on it.