Flipping through a physical photo album is now becoming a thing of the past, and we’re losing the emotional value that comes from holding a printed photo in hand, gifting it as a present, and reliving a significant memory (without blue light).
HP wanted to bring back the emotional value inherent to the printed photograph by bridging the digital and physical worlds; creating a whole new way to experience photographs. HP Tech Ventures, a long-running SOSA partner turned to us for open innovation solutions in the form of supporting technologies that would take their product to the next milestone in home-printing.
After conducting profound research in the photo-sharing industry and understanding HP’s needs in this specific use case, our open innovation team scouted relevant solutions ranging from computer vision, AI, image processing, to digital photo tools.
"One of the things that I really love about this process is how a big company like HP can really open its doors and can actually say: We don't know everything, we can't invent everything ourselves. We need help from the startup community, especially that community here in Israel."
HP selected five tech solutions that bring them closer to their goals of transforming the photographic experience. One of these solutions immediately began an integration process with HP, and was successfully integrated a few months later in HP's global smart app. Four others entered advanced conversations towards future collaborations.
“We came to Israel and used SOSA as a source to bring some very innovative companies, in a very innovative format so our teams would have something exciting to look at and listen to. I think we were very successful finding 5 great companies. One won, but we wound up with four more relationships. And even some of the seen companies will have things we’ll be using over the next few years.”
