BUSINESSiQ Editor Mike Hughes was invited by Amazon to go behind the scenes at the company's Innovation Lab in Italy, where a major new project was launched
Retail giant Amazon, which has invested heavily in the North East with a string of vast warehouses, has launched a global push to back innovative start-ups.
In 2022, the company launched a $1 billion venture investment programme that supports emerging technology companies developing solutions in warehouse automation and supply chain innovation. Now that fund is launching its first Innovation Challenge, a new global initiative to find, highlight, and drive novel technologies that help to solve the current and real challenges faced in the industry and across Amazon's operations.
The Challenge was announced during a Delivering the Future event in Vercelli, 50 miles outside Milan. Startups in the North East as much as anywhere face a number of hurdles beyond just securing capital, including determining product-market fit, finding customers, scaling technologies, and evaluating how and where to sell their technologies.
These challenges prevent many companies from reaching the point where they can commercialise their work at scale. The Challenge helps address these issues by collaborating with organisations that support robotics entrepreneurs, and offering Amazon’s resources, along with the opportunity for startups to potentially develop, test, and commercialise their technologies with Amazon.
"We’re excited to introduce the Innovation Challenge." said Franziska Bossart, Head of the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund.
"While we previously invited university teams from around the world to develop autonomous robotic systems for warehouse automation tasks, we are now tapping into industry itself by working directly with the roboticists, scientists, and engineers at companies that are already actively working to solve these problems.
"The Challenge offers us another opportunity to support the start-up ecosystem internationally while playing an important role in helping companies learn about Amazon and how their products could address our technology and logistics needs.”
This first Innovation Challenge will focus on packaging innovation and solutions that improve inventory visibility at high speeds. From an ocean container to a customer’s door, companies like Amazon need to follow products throughout the supply chain., and being able to see what’s inside a box that is on the journey is a challenge that has yet to be solved without physically opening them and slowing down deliveries.
Franziska Bossart added: “We see the Innovation Challenge as a great opportunity to work with leading minds across the industry to identify and address specific challenges that Amazon faces. We’re looking forward to kicking off this first Challenge and creating more opportunities to educate and drive awareness of other supply chain challenges we aim to overcome.”
- More details of the challenge are HERE
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