The Cape Chamber of Commerce & Industry through its Innovation Initiative is embarking on mapping the Innovation Eco-system in the greater Cape Town region. This eco-system is defined through the Innovation Initiative mission of being an assistant to the Innovation Entrepreneur in their business and product development.

Cape Town has become the hub of innovation activity across many different sectors in recent years. We have a thriving ICT sector with numerous businesses making world headlines all supported by local organisations and programmes. We also have a well-established academic and private support programmes and Tech Transfer Offices within the main universities who support both students and other SMME in their innovative product development. The selection of Incubators and Accelerators who span across both the private and public sectors offer a full range of services and products.  And the list goes on.

Through the Innovation Initiative, we aim to identify and map out as many of the role-players and stakeholders within the innovation eco-system in order to create a seamless process roadmap for new ideas and products.

We have identified 13 different sectors within the eco-system and will over the next few weeks, using email, Monkey Survey and in-person interviews begin to build and populate the map.

All identified organisations will be pinned to an open source Google-based map application detailing each sector, offerings and details. This map will become a part of the Innovation Initiative toolkit offered through the Cape Chamber to the entrepreneurs in Cape Town.

We call all interested parties, people and organisations who wish to become a part of this process to please email us on InnovationCapeTown@gmail.com for more information or to gain access to the questionnaire.