Grand Opening: Talent Garden apre il più grande co-working & innovation campus di Vienna

After 300 days of conversion work and around three million euros invested, the time has come!

“Talent Garden stands for establishing and massively promoting leading tech ecosystems in

Europe. With today’s opening of the Talent Garden Campus in Vienna, as the first

German-speaking location and central hub for Eastern Europe and the Balkans, we are

setting a decisive impulse for this. Vienna campus is one of the biggest campus in our

network, in a country that is key for our growth. Our goal is to take Vienna to the next level

thanks to our expertise and experience in innovation and digitisation. With this Campus we

want to make Vienna even more attractive for technology talents from all over Europe and

help local companies and talents to grow in Europe thanks to the network of Talent Garden.

That is certainly not all happening today, but we will make a difference here, as we have

done in other locations before,” says Davide Dattoli, CEO of Talent Garden.

With startup300 he will be actively supported by a strong local Austrian ecosystem partner.

According to Talent Garden Co-Founder and CEO Davide Dattoli, this concept has already

proven itself internationally several times.

Bernhard Lehner, CEO of startup300, sees this

model as a win-win situation for all sides: “We are very strongly positioned throughout

Austria, know the players and conditions and thus contribute local know-how and network.

Talent Garden brings enormous international experience to the table and together we want

to promote an even stronger and above all successful tech scene in Austria and in this

specific case first and foremost in Vienna”.

For Dattoli, who recently received 44 million euros in investment for Talent Garden’s

international expansion, one factor is decisive: “The tech industry is already creating by far

the most new jobs in Europe. We see ourselves as a catalyst in this respect and want to give

this positive development another boost here in Vienna”.

In view of all these plans paired with possible positive effects for the labour market, politicians from the City of Vienna, which

supports the project with the Vienna Business Agency, to the Federal Government are highly

interested in such projects. Federal Minister Margarete Schramböck said: “Initiatives such as

Talent Garden and its Innovation School are a very important building block for promoting

and driving digitisation and innovation.

The Talent Garden concept as a coworking and innovation network is based on three pillars:

“Work” (workplace), “Learn” (innovation school) and “Connect” (events). Talent Garden has

hosted hundreds of startups and thousands of freelancers across Europe in recent years.

Many established companies, including BMW, Google and Cicso, collaborate with the

innovation scene via Talent Garden. In Austria, these are partner companies such as

Raiffeisenbank International, Wiener Städtische Versicherung or Ernst & Young (EY). The

decisive advantage of such a campus is the permanent exchange between the people

working there, in conjunction with the Talent Garden Innovation School, a unique in-house

academy with a digital focus, event series and an internal networking platform.

And this is exactly the kind of event that will only be held on the third of 23 Talent Garden

locations. This is another indication of the central importance of the new Vienna location. For

Federal Minister Margarete Schramböck, the opening of the Innovation School is a very

welcome step: “The Innovation School trains our specialists of tomorrow with digital skills.

The opening of the Co-Working network Talent Garden is essential for the innovation and

start-up location Austria. It offers much more than just sharing office space. It offers space

for creative, networked thinking.”

Stefan Bauer, Director of the Innovation School’s Innovation School, almost puts it together

accordingly: “Among many others and topics ranging from programming, online marketing,

growth hacking to user experience, data analytics, it is our core task to convey digital

transformation. We also want to work intensively with local educational institutions.”

Currently, around 500 students are trained each year in the entire Talent Garden network via

this boot camp platform Innovation School. In addition, there is the training and further

education of around 2,500 specialists from leading national and international companies.

With Vienna and other new locations, a rapid doubling of these figures is planned.

For Heinz Grottenegg, Country Manager of Talent Garden in Austria,  opening was

the culmination of 300 very intensive days: “It was certainly the most intensive time of my

life, from theoretical planning to practical implementation, community involvement, operation

contrains or partner acquisition. We can all be very proud of what has been put together

here and look forward even more to what is to come. Today, all six floors and the Café will

go into full operation. The capacity utilisation is also good thanks to important players such

as startup300, Pioneers, Conda, StartupLive and many corporate partners as well as

startups and freelancer. The partner network is growing daily and before it even gets off the

ground, we have already fixed over 50 events in the house in the coming months. Today we

have registrations for more than 1,000 guests over the day, the interest was enormous and

all events today are completely full. As a team, we are delighted that after the soft launch it’s

really getting going and that life is really coming into the house!

Here are a few more comments from Talent Garden partners on the opening:

Bernhard Lehner, Co-CEO of startup300 AG and ecosystem partner of Talent Garden

“With the Talent Garden Vienna, the Viennese start-up and innovation community gets a

great offer that has never existed before in Austria. It is the first Innovation Hub to be

embedded in an international community of soon 30 other Spaces. It also provides access to

other Innovation Spaces in Austria, such as the factory300 and the Strada del Startup in

Linz. Reliable networking is a key factor for successful start-up ecosystems, and with Talent

Garden Vienna we’re taking a big step in the right direction.”

Nicole Stroj, Head of Innovation Management at Raiffeisenbank International

“As a founding partner, we are particularly pleased about the opening of the Talent Garden.

A new ecosystem for innovation between the startup scene and corporates is being created

here. The RBI ‘intrapreneurs’ will also be an active part of this community. Innovation is at

the heart of our strategy and the partnership with Talent Garden is therefore a high priority

for us”.

Thomas Gabriel, Partner and Head of Startup Ernst & Young Austria

“Especially in times of change, innovation is increasingly the result of bundled forces.

Sustainable progress requires ecosystems with diverse perspectives. Talent Garden is an

international success model coming to Austria. We are delighted to be the founding partner

of this exciting ecosystem and to be home to our EY Innovation Space in the Talent Garden.

There, we support companies with innovation, design thinking or LEGO Serious workshops

at Play™ and hackatons. EY experts with different consulting backgrounds regularly invite

you to exchange ideas and experiences. In addition, the headquarters of our EY Blockchain

Competence Center for the DACH region is now located in the Talent Garden.”

Roland Gröll, Managing Director of Wiener Städtische Versicherung

“Our Corporate Startup viesure strengthens Wiener Städtische’s innovation leadership in the

Austrian market. We deliberately chose Talent Garden as the location for our corporate

start-up in order to benefit from innovative thinkers, creative minds and external know-how.

Potential that we will use to further improve our customer communication and further

accelerate our digitization offensive.”

Founded in Italy in 2011, Talent Garden is Europe’s largest digital networking and education platform for digital

innovation. The aim of Talent Garden, headquartered in Milan, is to create an ecosystem capable of supporting

the best start-ups and communities in the technological and digital landscape and their growth, networking them

and contributing to the professional training of future innovation players. In short, digital innovation should be

promoted. While most co-working providers focus primarily on a few major European cities, Talent Garden

focuses on emerging second and third locations in order to successfully establish local tech ecosystems. Each

year Talent Garden hosts more than 1,000 events on digital innovation and technology in its premises. In 2018,

12 million euros of investor money were raised, and just a few weeks ago another 44 million euros. These funds

are now flowing massively into the international expansion of Talent Garden and the establishment of further

locations.

Prominent Talent Garden investors include Linkedin (via a venture partner), 500 startups, Social Capital and

Italy’s largest investment bank Tamburi Investment Partners. As part of a massive expansion of the largest

European co-working network, new offices were recently opened in Dublin and Copenhagen. The next focus

countries with location openings in the next two years: the home market Italy, Spain where the Madrid office will

be opened shortly, the CEE region, France and the Benelux countries and Germany where Munich and Cologne

are targeted. New locations are also planned throughout Scandinavia. By 2020, this will include the already fixed

leap into two absolute innovation and start-up hotspots: Israel and Silicon Valley in San Francisco, both as

landing sites for European startups.

Source : Company