Fostering Urban Mobility Innovation: Start-ups and SMEs

This session spotlights start-ups and SMEs as practical engines of urban mobility innovation and focuses on the hard part, which is scaling up from pilots to replicable deployment that delivers public value. Contributions should explore what it takes to become deployment ready, looking across multiple cities. This includes integration of public transport and public space management, interoperability and standards constraints, and credible evidence of impact on safety, accessibility, emissions and system efficiency. Proposals are encouraged to show how cities can be effective partners through living labs and sandboxes designed for learning, with clear requirements, data sharing agreements and realistic pathways to mainstreaming.

A dedicated angle is the scale up and finance bridge, focusing on how innovators balance investor expectations, such as unit economics, regulatory risk and scalability, with public sector realities, such as tender rules, risk allocation and service continuity. Relevant EU scale up-support, for example through the European Innovation Council, may be addressed where it tangibly supports deployment and SME growth. The session prioritises narratives explaining why scaling up succeeded or failed and aims to explore replicable partnership and procurement patterns that strengthen Europe’s competitiveness while addressing city objectives.