3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
5 Financial
5.1 LUX-TIR FINTECH. Next generation Fintech brings together the world of finance with the
new opportunities brought forth by the build out and scale up of a Third Industrial
Revolution infrastructure and the new business models and practices that accompany it.
Given the key relevance of the financial sector in Luxembourg, Fintech for SMEs is a
formidable opportunity. SMEs often suffer from inadequate funding because the finances
of SMEs are characterized by high risk and low scale. Because FinTech solutions are
efficient and effective at lower scale, small businesses will be one of the main beneficiaries
of FinTech’s disruptive power. The LUX-TIR FinTech project aims at developing a new set of
products tailored to the needs of small businesses. Funding initiatives can include: “peerto-peer”
lending, merchant and e-commerce finance, invoice finance, online supply chain
finance, online trade finance, etc. The LUX-TIR FinTech project should consider both the
enabling factors that are critical to ensure rapid growth (availability of data, a supportive
regulatory environment, the provision of sufficient investor capital, financial education)
and the relevant risk factors (limited protection of retail investors, potential extension of
funding to unworthy borrowers, systemic risk due to a partly unregulated sector).
6 Educational
6.1 The LUX-TIR Education for Creativity project aims at bringing Luxembourg to the
forefront in the design of new educational curricula for the citizens of the future post-TIR
society. Start-up ecosystems thrive in multidisciplinary settings. Luxembourg could develop
(in collaboration with public and private organizations) specific TIR-related interdisciplinary
curricula, projects and programs at universities, incubators, start-up competitions and
international entrepreneur exchange programs to foster entrepreneurship and
commercialization. Compare the GSVA (German Silicon Valley Accelerator) and German
EXIST Program. Both domain-general and domain-specific approaches to creative thinking
should be contemplated. Neuroscientific, cognitive, social, and cultural perspectives must
be considered. Theoretical and practical approaches to idea generation must be developed
and transformed into subjects for schools, universities, as well as life-long training
programs.
6.2 Introduce Scratch to Luxembourg schools. Mitch Resnick at the MIT Media Lab helped
create Scratch and ScratchJr., computer languages designed expressly to introduce children
to programming: "Coding is not just a set of technical skills. It's a new way of expressing
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