The two Munich-based startups Celonis and Blickfeld won the 2019 German Innovation Award in the SME and Startup categories. The European Airbus Group emerged victorious in the third award category, Large Companies.
Two out of three innovation awards go to Munich this year: In the medium-sized business category, the Munich-based Unicorn Celonis took the win. Blickfeld won in the Startups category. The award was presented for the tenth time this year.
Innovation award for Munich unicorn
Celonis With its process mining technology, the jury honored the company as the “German Palantir,” which has developed a tool with “broad impact.”
“We are delighted that we were able to convince the jury of the German Innovation Award with our Intelligent Business Cloud and take home the coveted prize,”
says Bastian Nominacher (here in a video interview with Munich Startup), Co-CEO and co-founder of Celonis.
"This award is a recognition for our entire team and a wonderful recognition of our work. With our technology, we provide companies of all industries and sizes with an innovative and powerful tool to achieve even greater efficiency in all business processes."
Sensors for autonomous cars and robots
Blickfeld, the award winners in the Startups category, have developed a novel laser scanner technology. These so-called LiDAR sensors generate high-resolution depth maps suitable for environmental perception. The scanners are thus scalable, maintenance- and wear-free, and enable scanning with a long range, resolution, and a large field of view. The Blickfeld sensors are used in autonomous vehicles, IoT applications, and robotics. The jury praised the level of innovation and market potential of the new technology as major advantages.
MIT Professor Cynthia Breazeal also received a special "Future Thinker" award. Breazeal is considered a pioneer in social robotics and human-robot interaction. Her research focuses on the social cognition and learning capabilities of robots, which, as social robots, promote trust, engagement, and psychological involvement in the work environment.
