Following on the Digital Catapult Centre Brighton’s event on Retail Innovation and Technology in September, we invited SMEs, retail businesses, universities and corporates to the Retail Innovation Knowledge Cafe on Wednesday 21st October, to continue to the discussion around this subject.
The focus in the Retail Innovation Knowledge Cafe was on local data and global problems facing retailers and an enthusiastic group discussed macro-level challenges facing businesses seeking to implement new technologies under the Internet of Things umbrella and more local level needs as reported through Brighton’s Business Improvement District consultation exercise.
As a result, we have established an engaged group centred on this theme. We’re really excited about the collaborative ethos emerging which spans expertise from academic community, SME and large corporates across areas such as data insights and integration, networks and IoT hardware to ecommerce and design - of products and services more widely. Add to that business support and start-up expertise and you get the picture of the group.
Our approach is to equip participants with data, tools and connectivity - to each other and to expertise. This includes recent survey data and also peer-to-peer access via a Slack channel supported by the Digital Catapult Centre Brighton’s Innovation team; an online collaborative space for the group to share insights, meet potential collaborators and test out early stage propositions.
In the coming months we’ll be running an Open Pit Stop – a practical Digital Catapult Centre event which enable innovators, SMEs, start-ups and scale-ups to co-create the retail innovation and technology agenda and in particular enable a number of selected participants to receive further support from the Digital Catapult Centre.
Whilst we have established a group of engaged SMEs so far, we would like to continue to extend the invitation to the wider digital and tech community and invite SME’s and other organisations working within this theme, to join in the conversation as we go, bringing fresh ideas, thoughts and feedback to the table, so do join us at future events and feel free to request an invitation to the conversation on Slack.
The next Retail Innovation Knowledge Cafe is taking place on Wednesday 11th November and we do hope you can join us there. More information about this event and registration details can be found here.
Look out for more details of this Retail Innovation Open Pit Stop and the development of the theme via the Slack space, by signing up to the Digital Catapult Centre Brighton’s mailing list and also via Digital Catapult Centre Brighton on Twitter @DigiCatBrighton.
The Digital Catapult Centre Brighton is inviting a limited amount of small businesses with an Internet of Things or data focus to the FuseBox for potential free work space. Read the blog or email Hub and Events Coordinator Rosalie@wiredsussex.com directly to say hello and to receive more information.
If you have any queries around Retail Innovation and Technologies, upcoming events and/or joining the group conversation on Slack, please contact the Catapult Innovation team: Jim.Byford@wiredsussex.com or Stevie.L.Seccombe@aexp.com
Hopefully see you at an event soon.