5PRING ramps-up support for 5G innovation in the West Midlands in 2021

Since launching in March 2020, 5PRING has successfully engaged with nearly 400 organisations across the West Midlands to drive innovation with 5G, despite the pandemic. Now, as the UK emerges from lockdown, 5PRING is opening facilities in Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Warwick University to help more businesses and public sector organisations innovate and benefit from 5G.

A collaboration between West Midlands 5G (WM5G), Digital Catapult, Deloitte, O2 and Wayra, 5PRING will run 25 introductory events, six corporate innovation programmes, including six hackathon style incubate programmes, and six three-month deep acceleration programmes in 2021. These events kick off with three free-to-attend showcase events, ahead of the opening of the physical premises in all three locations – once restrictions have been relaxed – to demonstrate how organisations can use 5G to transform their businesses, and give a boost to the already thriving 5G community within the West Midlands:

• The Coventry showcase on 04 March will focus on the transport sector
• Wolverhampton will be on 11 March with a focus on the manufacturing industries
• The Birmingham event on 18 March will highlight how 5G can support green innovation

This follows the success of the first Green Innovation Challenge programme which brought together Suez, West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), Mott McDonald, Constructing Excellence Midlands and the University of Wolverhampton to work with startups and scaleups using 5G to solve this challenge.

Robert Franks, Managing Director at WM5G said: “The West Midlands has the largest number of start-ups outside of London as well as many leading enterprises and public services organisations. I’m delighted that 5PRING has been able to engage hundreds of these organisations and start-ups to help them understand the benefits of 5G and start to innovate with 5G – even in the midst of a pandemic. Looking ahead we’re committed to further scale 5PRING’s programmes with organisations of all kinds – to unlock the power of 5G innovation in driving economic and social recovery. Please get involved by registering to participate in 5PRING’s engage events.”

Ravi Kumar, Digital Lead at Black Country Consortium, said: “5PRING is a valuable programme for businesses, SMEs, or individuals wanting to learn about 5G. The programmes provide you access to industry experts, you are taught about effective business planning, how to pitch, how to develop a presentation, and given coaching in a warm, friendly empowering environment. 5PRING is much more than just 5G, so register for the programme today”

Joey Jones, Co-Founder/Chief Revenue & Compliance Officer at CurveBlock, said: “CurveBlock has participated in a number of accelerators and most cost more time than the value they give back. This is not the case with 5PRING. 5PRING has encouraged and pushed us to iterate quickly and correctly to bring a valuable product to market that was not on our roadmap prior to the challenge. The time and effort spent with 5PRING has been well worth it for us.”

Luke Strickland, Environment Team Lead at Mott McDonald, said: “Being a challenge owner on 5PRING has been both insightful and rewarding. Through the process we’ve engaged with some fascinating organisations, sharing mutual expertise and developing meaningful ongoing relationships. We’d recommend it to organisations considering becoming a challenge owner.”

For additional information and to register for the forthcoming programme of events, visit: www.5pring.org