The startup Zapiens is the winner of the 7th edition of the Sacyr Innovation Awards. The firm from Asturias, which won the final over the two other startups, received the prize from Manuel Manrique, Chairman of Sacyr and the Sacyr Foundation.
Zapiens has developed a gamified application for knowledge and innovation management in companies. This startup, led by Daniel Suárez, identifies the level of knowledge of the organization as well as the leaders of such knowledge.
The winning startup defeated Liphi Technologíes and DotGIS. Liphi Technologies presented a project based on a disruptive technology for the transmission of data through the visible light spectrum by means of LED bulbs.
For its part, DotGIS is a geospatial analysis tool with GIS technology that allows to translate large amounts of data into interactive and personalized maps.
Prize and commitment to innovation
The winner will receive €50,000 in financing, mentoring, access to Sacyr’s network of professionals and clients and specialized support for the development and implementation of the startup. The possibility of developing a pilot project is also on the table.
In addition, Sacyr will seek synergies and possibilities of collaboration with other participants of the Innovation Awards. In this edition, the multinational company received more than 40 applications, some of them with great development potential.
With this award, the Sacyr Foundation deepens its commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship.
During the awards ceremony, Sacyr’s Chairman, Manuel Manrique, highlighted the importance of "lifelong innovation to be sustainable in the long term.” He also highlighted the great acceptance of internal initiatives, with 152 proposals, most of which will be used, he stated.
Sacyr's General Manager for Strategy and Corporate Development, Victor de Ávila, explained Sacyr’s transformation terms of innovation: "For us innovation is all those ideas, both internal and external, that generate value in business," he said.
The awards ceremony also had the presence of Carlos Barrabés, entrepreneur and founder of Barrabes.com, one of the first e-commerce websites in the world, who talked about innovation. In his speech, he explained that the world is moving towards "a shared interest model, in which those involved are seeking to build value jointly taking sustainability into account." The objective of this new vision is to create “memorable experiences”.
Awards for best internal initiatives
During the event, the awards were also given to the best initiatives developed by Sacyr's staff through Ingenium, the innovation platform to share and promote ideas based on apps for its later incorporation into the activity of the Sacyr Group. This year, the initiative had a total of 152 proposals.
The winners for the best innovative app initiatives were:
- Miguel Ángel Torres, manager of Sacyr Construcción Chile, for his project to control the production of machinery on the work site through an app using GPS geolocation.
- Francisco Javier Lizaga from Valoriza Facilities, for the proposal to create an app that records and plays equipment maintenance videos from QR codes.