On Tuesday 6 December 2016, the 22nd edition of the Fedil Innovation Award ceremony took place at the Chambre de Commerce in Luxembourg-Kirchberg, in the presence of numerous guests, including Yves Elsen, Chairman of the Governance Council of the University of Luxembourg, members Of the jury as well as the winners of the 2016 promotion.
In his greeting, Fedil President Nicolas Buck expressed his admiration for the achievements of the winners. He pointed out that innovation is the driving force behind industry and stressed that, since innovation is above all a matter of creativity, it is a matter of doing everything in order to reserve a fertile soil for it. He called for encouraging interdisciplinarity in research and in companies and to inform young people about the prospects of Luxembourg industry.
For the 2016 Innovation Prize, the jury decided to award five prizes out of about 20 applications submitted. This high number of cases demonstrates that the companies have the right approach to never stop investing in research.
- 2016 Innovation Prize: Tarkett for the "Digital printing for vinyl floor covering" project
- Start-up Prize: APATEQ-PWT S.A. for the "MarinePaq onshore" project
- Automotive Prize: IEE for the "VitaSense" project
- Process Prize: Husky Injection Molding Systems.
- Product Design Prize: ArcelorMittal for the "Nouvelle technique de laminage pour palplanches Z" project
At the end of the evening, a panel with Yves Elsen and Nicolas Buck talked about the disruptive intervention of young entrepreneur Vincent Pedrini (co-founder of Nomoko) and discussed the problems encountered by young innovators and investigated the Innovation stakes in Luxembourg: do we cultivate enough the notion of risk? How to better combine research and company and, especially, how to facilitate the task to those talents who have an idea? These are questions that we must work hand in hand to advance our ecosystem.
