Eindhoven puts active living to the test in Innovation Summit
The EU-funded I3-INSHAPE project supported 15 partners across Europe with 41 small and medium-sized businesses in 18 collaborations.
Published on November 6, 2026
One of the projects in the EU-funded I3-INSHAPE project © ELIS
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At the ELIS Innovation Summit on 11 and 12 November, European entrepreneurs and researchers will show what it takes to bring ideas for healthier, more active lives from a local pilot to a wider market.
A satellite map can tell a city where its parks heat up. A ground-level camera can show where people actually walk. Put the two together, and a city planner can ask a more useful question: which paths do people keep using as temperatures rise? Dutch computer vision company ViNotion and Spain’s Green Urban Data are combining those two sources in GreenMotion AI, a tool designed to help planners understand how people use public space in different weather conditions.
That collaboration captures the question behind the ELIS Innovation Summit, which takes place at Melt at Avular in Eindhoven on 11 and 12 November. How do you get a promising piece of technology into the hands of someone who can use it to make everyday movement easier? For a city, that might mean deciding where to add shade. For a physiotherapist, it might mean finding a way to guide someone through exercises between appointments. Both depend on understanding what people do in the places they already spend their time.
When a prototype meets everyday life
Consider Smart Back to Sport, another case in the INSHAPE Inspiration Book, which will be presented at the summit. Valencia-based Blautic Designs brought motion-sensing technology to the project. Eurofitness, from Catalonia, brought physiotherapy experience and an understanding of the practical needs of people recovering from injury. Together, they developed a pilot to support exercises in fitness centres and at home, where a physiotherapist may be days away from seeing how a patient is getting on.
Early participants found the guidance motivating, and physiotherapists felt more confident assessing progress. The partners are developing an app and exploring cooperation with fitness-centre chains. That next step raises a question that comes up again in Eindhoven: when a tool could help patients, clinicians and employers in different ways, who will pay to make it part of routine recovery? One workshop brings together healthcare providers, employers, insurers, and entrepreneurs to examine the gap between medical recovery and being ready for work or daily life.
ELIS Innovation Summit 2026 - Elis Innovation Hub
ELIS INNOVATION SUMMIT 2026 Scaling Impact Together 11-12 November, Melt at Avular, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Get Your Ticket Now! Two days to turn healthy active lifestyle innovations into new business and lasting impact: at work, in public space, in sport, at school and at home.
What makes a local pilot travel?
The EU-funded I3-INSHAPE project spent three years working on that transition. 15 partners across seven European regions supported 41 small and medium-sized businesses in 18 cross-border collaborations. The network paired companies with complementary expertise and helped them find places to test their ideas with users. Eindhoven is where the partners will present those results, hold the INSHAPE Innovation Award session and launch a network to continue the work.
The collaboration between Dutch sports innovator YOU.FO and the Finnish Sport Institute of Three Campuses shows how that can work in practice. The two met during an INSHAPE activity in Eindhoven, where the Finnish participants tried YOU.FO’s game themselves. In March, the company travelled to Finland to run workshops and demonstrations for students, coaches and staff. The institute could then explore how the game might fit into its teaching and coach training. For YOU.FO, the exchange offered a chance to see how an organisation in another country might use its game. The relationship grew beyond the programme's formal project partnerships.
Out of the conference room and onto the bike
The first day pairs business questions with choices about how places are designed. Movement scientist Lore Cuypers will speak about public space, and a workshop will ask how teenage girls can help shape places where they feel welcome to move and meet. Another session looks at how to measure the social and financial returns of investing in physical activity. For a municipality considering a change to a park or playground, those questions converge in a practical decision: whose behaviour should change, and how would the city tell whether it has?
On 12 November, participants will get on bikes to visit Eindhoven’s testing grounds. The route takes in Area 51 and the Urban Sportpark, the Workplace Vitality Hub at High Tech Campus Eindhoven and De Tongelreep, where TeamNL swimmers train. Each stop offers a different setting in which to ask what makes an idea stick. An elite swimmer can give a developer precise feedback on a training tool. A teenager deciding whether to return to a sports park, or an office worker deciding whether to move during the working day, offers a different kind of evidence. For the businesses in Eindhoven, finding out what brings people back may matter as much as getting them to try something once.