Background

FutureWorld Co-Space Test-Bed (FutureWorld in short), initiated by MDA and established in NTU, aims to aggregate common services available from industry and research institutions for creating innovative products as well as supporting test-bedding activities. FutureWorld focuses on designing, modeling and integrating of the real and virtual worlds and its impact on how we live, play and learn. This Co-Space Test-Bed is a place where FutureWorld solutions are created, tested, commercialized and deployed.

Industrial companies will benefit from FutureWorld’s common services and partners in the development period. They can leverage strong research capability from universities. They will have great opportunities to expose their new products / services to a large pool of massive test users in the testing period. With time to market minimized, the product will have a better chance to be successfully commercialized in the commercialization period. With the help of FutureWorld, industrial companies will innovate faster, save development cost and gain much more competitiveness in the market. The whole industry will also be promoted with more and more companies joining the FutureWorld, providing their common services and collaborating with other partners.

Offerings

Enlarging Company Perimeter

Research capabilities of commercial companies are usually not as strong as universities. Many companies do not even have a research department and thus largely rely on external technologies. With FutureWorld as a bridge, companies can collaborate with universities and with each other more effectively and conveniently. FutureWorld will leverage research expertise of university community and conduct co-development with full time and experienced research personnel. FuturWorld will also provide first-line support of common services such as API, SDK etc. and help to promote the services and facilitate match-making between different companies. Backed by the strong research capability with access to state-of-the-art digital media technologies from the universities as well as support for common services from FutureWorld, companies will innovate faster, save development cost and gain much more competitiveness in the market.

Leveraging Large Community of Users

FutureWorld will have access to a pool of over 23,000 undergraduates and 10,000 graduate students, which is a critical resource and will play an important role in the test-beds. These students are exposed to the latest technologies especially in the area of digital media e.g. social network and online games. They are more willing to try and test new technologies, and are able to provide relevant feedbacks and further requirements. Therefore they will greatly contribute to not only the development but also the testing process, targeting at products of real market value.

Reducing Time to Market

FutureWorld will also work as a creative cluster aggregating a large pool of IPs from NTU and participating collaborators. When a sought-after demand in the market is identified, FutureWorld will search for existing IPs that fit or are close to the requirement. Development or relevant research can be started instantly, depending on the existence of such IPs. This will significantly save the cost and speed up the development. With time to market minimized, the product will have a greater chance to be successfully commercialized.

Spinning Off New Ventures

Being a centralized hub linking entities working in different directions or even different areas, FutureWorld facilitates collaboration between various partners. It will create a platform to enable creative talents who used to work independently in different areas to get together to exchange and cross-pollinate ideas. Companies will be easily exposed to the latest achievements of other parties. Through constant exchanges, they will more easily spur experimentation and innovation based on respective IPs. New projects can thus be launched and new IP developed.

Offering Commercialization Opportunities

In terms of commercialization, FutureWorld can help companies to promote their solutions / services as common services for other partners to test. It will facilitate the link-up with interested partners who may want to integrate the solutions / services into their own projects / infrastructures, and even some go-to-market partners for direct commercialization. With a close link to the digital media industry in Singapore, FutureWorld is one of the best places for local and overseas companies to explore collaborations to commercialize their solutions / services.

Call-for Participation in FutureMedia/FutureWorld testbed

Companies / institutions can participate in FutureWorld Co-Space Test-Bed by the following ways:

• Providing market demands, sponsorships or commercialization platforms for new projects;
• Providing common services to be used by other partners (companies or researchers) in all test-beds;
• Developing new projects with existing partners utilizing common services provided in FutureWorld;
• Proof-of-Concept testing utilizing FutureWorld testing services;
• Testing existing or new projects utilizing FutureWorld testing services;
• Commercializing new products / solutions utilizing FutureWorld common services.

Eligibility

FutureWorld would like to collaborate with companies / institutions that meet the following requirements:

-          Demand drivers / sponsors

• Companies or institutions that have strong market demands for innovative services, applications or solutions, especially in the area of digital media, and already have platforms to commercialize them, or can sponsor the R&D or commercialization of these services, applications or solutions.

-          Technology partners

• Companies or institutions that can provide common services and corresponding support for other partners, and are looking for possible collaboration during the R&D, testing or commercialization stages, for example, the consultancy in R&D stage and the licensing in commercialization stage.

-          Development partners

• Companies or institutions that would like to research and develop cutting-edge technologies, services, applications or solutions, utilizing the broad range of common services and collaborating with other partners in FutureWorld.

-          Testing partners

• Companies or institutions that is willing to test their innovative services, applications or solutions, either under development or ready for commercialization, leveraging the large community of test users in FutureWorld.

-          Commercialization partners

• Companies or institutions that is willing to commercialize their innovative services, applications or solutions utilizing FutureWorld common services.

Support

In support for this call for participation, companies can look forward to the following support from FutureWorld testbed.

• Access to FutureWorld test-beds and common services
• Technical  Support from FutureWorld testbed
• Possible test-marketing and commercialization opportunities with FutureWorld testbed demand drivers/sponsors.
• The companies may be promoted and deployed across MDA & NTU media platforms

Enquiries

Futureworld Email Contact:

contact@futureworld.sg

Website:

www.futureworld.sg

MDA  – Kenneth Fu, Kenneth_Fu@mda.gov.sg

Marcus Moo, Marcus_Moo@mda.gov.sg