Published: Wednesday, 2nd November 2016

The centre is aimed at partnering with innovative construction and real-estate businesses.

The Accelerator, to be known as 'Impulse London', will be located in Royal Greenwich and will work closely with Digital Greenwich, the Royal Borough of Greenwich's specialist Smart City innovation team.

Attracting the most exciting companies

Impulse London is an open innovation initiative which aims to attract the most innovative and exciting companies in the construction and real estate sectors, allowing them to test new applications and services in Greenwich. Greenwich is already a test site for driverless vehicles.

Accelerators bring together businesses and corporate decision makers to provide support, coaching and opportunities to businesses and small and medium size companies (SMEs) to share innovation in a common field, enabling entrepreneurs and businesses to work in a community of like-minded entrepreneurs.

Bringing experts together

As well as offering hands-on assistance to companies, accelerators also provide a platform for project sharing, networking as well as facilitating direct contact with investors who specialise in a particular industry.

Impulse London joins five sister accelerators already operated by Impulse Partners in Paris, which all tackle issues concerning infrastructure, construction building and real-estate - Impulse London is their first venture into the UK.

'Royal Borough a prime location for technology businesses'

Councillor Denise Hyland, Leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, said: "Our partnership with Impulse Partners confirms the Royal Borough is a prime location for technology businesses. Our work on smart city innovation, the proximity of leading universities and their graduates and our position at the heart of London’s growth, together with a dynamic business environment, are creating exciting new opportunities and is central to our future economic growth.

"I am delighted that the highly successful Impulse Partners has selected Greenwich as the location for their first Accelerator outside of Paris. This is very exciting news that will bring new jobs and economic activity to Greenwich. It further reinforces my belief that cities have a key role post Brexit in attracting investment from Europe and beyond."

Opportunities for companies from across the globe

Announcing the partnership with the Royal Borough of Greenwich, Thomas Le Diouron, Co-Founder of Impulse Partners, stated: "We are delighted to be working with the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the Digital Greenwich team. The Royal Borough of Greenwich is a leader in smart city innovation and has created a successful environment for businesses in their innovation centre in Greenwich.

"Our initiative will create new opportunities for companies from Greenwich, Europe and beyond to work with some of the leading real estate, construction and infrastructure stakeholders. We will facilitate opportunities for UK companies to work in France and as well as creating the opportunity for international businesses to locate in Greenwich."

Find out more about the initiative

Businesses interested in learning more about this initiative should contact:

Digital Greenwich - Laetitia Regnault, International Business Development
Email: laetitia.regnault@digitalgreenwich.com

Impulse Partners - Thibault Lecerf, Accelerator Manager
Email: thibault.lecerf@impulse-partners.com