Jerusalem
Jerusalem Municipality is the biggest Municipality in Israel. It counts 10000 workers from more than 20 departments.
The challenge
Jerusalem Municipality choose to be part of smart city ecosystem that is constantly growing. At 2017 it identified 12 challenges that it would like to resolve by cooperating with innovative startups in the field of smart cities. Usually Municipality involves startups on the basis of tenders. But during the preparation to submit the tender startups face the bureaucratic system that resists innovation.
Thus, Municipality started to look for another ways of cooperation in order to adopt innovative approach.
The solution
Duco offered to the Municipality strategy that will take it to the front of new technologies and will allow to build new kind of cooperations between Municipality and startups.
The Smart Cities of Jerusalem Program is an accelerator program that does not take up a share of the company’s. The program is a unique way to create pilots and maintain relationships with the smart city startups and municipalities, mentors and potential investors in a quality closed community. The main aim of the program is education and adaptation of companies and technologies relevant to the local market (Jerusalem) in cultural, technological and business aspects.
The program includes creation of cooperation with partners – technology and energy companies like Partner, Sonol, YSB, Intel and Shacham Arica. Such cooperations help the startups to learn from big market and technological experience of these companies.
After reviewing several proposals for building acceleration programs, Municipality chose Duco’s proposal as the most practical and effective strategy.
The results
During the first stage of the program Municipality received more then 200 applications from startups from all over the country. 30 startups were chosen to present in front of the judges – representatives from the municipality, partners and leading figures in startup community. The steering committee chose 15 companies that participateв in a “Boot Camp” for two weeks. At the end of the Bootcamp, 8 companies were selected by the steering committee to enter the central stage of the program. During four months, these startups received personal guidance by experts in the field, representatives from the corporates, the municipality, as well as professionals in various fields.
Five pilot projects were build during these four months. They embraced the fields like smart lighting, public transport ticketing, security, Municipality personnel and property management.
In summary, Duco is helping Jerusalem Municipality to:
Resolve Municipality challenges by implementing innovative technologies
Learn the practical tools to work with startups
Accelerate projects and adopt new solutions in the speed of small companies
