Purpose and contents

TIM, through TIM WCAP - the Open Innovation Program of TIM Group that promotes and facilitates the collaboration with startups, SMEs and scaleups - launches TIM Challenge for Circular Economy.

The Challenge is an international call addressed to startups, SMEs and national and international scaleups and aims to identify and recruit companies able to support the TIM Group to intervene on waste that is physiologically generated in the business, in order to transform it into value.

The solutions should be capable of intervening on one of the different types of waste that can be generated in company operations:

The projects submitted may cover the following topics:

• Civil and industrial special waste
  with a particular focus on batteries, discarded equipment (RAEE), wood, plastic, paper, glass, iron and steel;
• Industrial and civil infrastructures
  such as the fixed network, the mobile network, data centres, corporate offices’ furniture;
• Resources, materials and capital goods
  such as network equipment and servers, copper;
• Products for our customers
  such as smartphones, telephones, tablets, modems, decoders and other devices.

• Waste of resources, materials and valuable components:
  
  • object: resources, materials and components that could be recovered; 
  • objective: reduction of use, reuse, recycling, upcycling, extraction of components for the secondary raw materials’ generation;
• Waste of life cycles:
  
  • object: products which reach the end of their life cycle prematurely and which could still be used; 
  • object: products which reach the end of their life cycle prematurely and which could still be used; 
  • objective: to create maintenance, repair, reconditioning or remanufacturing services for a re-placing on the market;
• Waste of capacity:
  
  • object: underused or unused products and assets; 
  • objective: to generate value through co-ownership, sharing, co-use and other forms of pooling of resources;

Award

Winning Proposals will have the opportunity to negotiate a collaboration agreement with the TIM Group.

It is understood that (i) the definition and signing of the aforesaid agreement is subject to the positive outcome of a due diligence carried out by TIM and (ii) TIM will not under any circumstances be obliged to enter into the aforesaid agreement or any type of collaboration with the selected Companies.

The terms and conditions of the collaboration, if any, intellectual property aspects, as well as the consideration, will be defined after the winners have been selected and will be governed by subsequent agreements to be negotiated in good faith between the parties following the project closure.

TIM also reserves the right to assess possible investments in the selected companies through TIM Ventures, its venture capital instrument, where the solution proposed by the selected Companies is significantly consistent with TIM’s industrial strategy.

Eligibility Criteria

Participants to the Challenge may be national and international companies, small and medium enterprises, and scaleups that meet all the following eligibility criteria:

• must have been established for at least 2 years up to a maximum of 10 years;
• 2019 or 2020 revenue amounting to € 100,000 or higher, or with more than € 1 million funding received;
• introducing an innovative digital project that leverages the company own digital products or services and that has a level of technological maturity greater than 6 as defined in accordance with the provisions contained in the Technology Readiness Level.

Proposals evaluation

The Challenge will open on November 24, 2021, and will close on January 24, 2022.

For any technical and organizational needs, the Organization reserves the right to change the start and end dates of the Challenge by notifying them to the Candidates.

Candidates' Proposals will be evaluated by a qualified jury composed of experts in the world of innovation and ICT.

The Jury shall assess the Proposals submitted by Candidates at its sole and unquestionable discretion, based on the assessment criteria set out in these Rules and Regulations.

The Candidate must accept the Rules and Regulations of the Challenge and the disclaimer, by flagging on the dedicated website section and by declaring that they have read the privacy policy.

The Jury shall analyse and evaluate all Proposals submitted by the Candidates according to the following evaluation criteria as well as to the Technology Readiness Level.

• Adherence to the Challenge in accordance with Article 5 of the Rules and Regulations.
• Innovativeness of the solution;
• Economic feasibility
• Technical feasibility
• Large-scale applicability of the proposal and its scalability to the whole Italian country;
• Certification of the supply chain that certifies the level of recovery of assets, resources, materials and components.

The “TIM Challenge for Circular Economy” does not constitute a prize-winning event.

Terms and conditions