Incubation
MOME has set an ambitious goal to be the leading creative industry and innovation hub in Central and Eastern Europe by 2030. To compliment the university’s efforts to achieve this goal, we’ve launched a design-driven incubation program to aid young innovators, researchers, and aspiring entrepreneurs in Hungary. Anyone may apply to participate in our incubation program, regardless of one’s age, educational background, discipline, industry, or field of study.
We search for early-stage entrepreneurial ideas that are focusing on designing impactful solutions that are connected to circularity and well-being. We further support our activities with events such as hackathons and bootcamps.
Program benefits

Receive personalised mentorship
Access MOME’s international and interdisciplinary mentor pool to receive personalised advice from experts in design, innovation, and startups.

Access to design talent and research
Support from MOME’s design researchers, lecturers, trainers, and students to receive value-adding creative support for your project.

Access to campus infrastructure
Participants can make use of MOME’s infrastructure, including the new Technology Park and the dedicated co-working space on campus.

Networking opportunities
Participants can build up their network within MOME and with experienced entrepreneurs, mentors, and innovators in the local and regional startup ecosystem.

Interdisciplinary learning sessions
Participate in workshops, open discussions, and interdisciplinary (peer-to-peer) learning sessions that collectively contribute to further developing your project.

Potential funding opportunities
After successfully passing the stage gate in the incubation program, you can access potential funding opportunities from the university or through our network of investors.

InWaste
“The aim of our business concept is to minimize food waste in the catering industry. Our idea is to collect food waste and to turn it into excellent protein.”
Team needs:
- New team members: graphic designer
Contact: sean12348998@gmail.com

Fraxinea
“We offer scalable, 100% biodegradable, plant based and ethical materials grown from the root structure of forest fungi. Our material is a unique, high performing solution customized for your needs.”
Team needs:
- Funding to maintain a small production facility, and for material research.
- New team members: a chemist and an automation expert
Contact: fraxinea.fabrica@gmail.com

True Colors
“We are developing a [card] game which helps to strengthen the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren.”
"UTO is a new kind of jewelry, a category that hasn't existed before. With our biodegradable accessories you can retwist the T-shirts you already own, you get something new without buying new."

Péter Molnár
Péter, Director of MOME's Design Institute, is an innovation strategist with over 10 years of leadership experience. He has contributed to meaningful innovation through over 50 projects, 1/3 of which were international, with people from Switzerland, USA, Japan, UK, Austria and more.

Dr. Bori Fehér
Bori is an architect and social designer focused on resilience and sustainability. She is the Social Design Hub Lead at MOME Innovation Center, where she facilitates practitioners, students and researchers in social, eco and humanitarian design projects, works with underprivileged communities.

Lili Zoé Érmezei
Lili is a strategist and organisational psychologist with a creative and business leadership background who develops innovative organisations, brands and businesses based on a human-centred approach. She is the founder of Helsinki Mind, while also an external lecturer and consultant of MOME.

Máté Barna
Máté is Education Development Manager at MOME as well as a trainer of Cellux Csoport. In addition to service design, he is active in communications and institutional organisational and educational development fields. He regularly applies the methodologies and tools of service design and design thinking in these fields as well.

Tamás Fogarasy
As Head of the Interaction Design MA at MOME and Managing Partner of Exalt Interactive, Tamás has been helping brands to create or transform their services by finding the right balance between business goals, ethics and people's needs.

Dr. Flóra Anna Gubicz
Flóra is MOME's Lead IP Strategist, a jurist with experience in the area of intellectual property (IP), and internet law. She graduated from the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Pázmány Péter Catholic University in 2016. During her doctoral studies, her main research interests are the copyright protection of photographs and the necessity and extent of the term of protection.

Mihály Minkó
Mihály is a data visualisation expert with a passion for visualisation of everything, be it digital or physical. He currently works at the MOME Innovation Centre as a researcher and has been teaching data visualization for MOME Open courses for several years.

Attila Maxim Ferenczi
Attila is the CEO and Founder of Recobin Ltd. and he has been involved in waste management, education and awareness raising for nearly 20 years. His company's focus is on the production of environmentally friendly selective waste bins and the optimisation of waste management with a facility management approach.

Atanas Enev
Atanas is an architect, designer, and entrepreneur with experience in managing complex multi-stakeholder projects and developing innovative products from renewable materials. He is the Manager and Founder of Biomyc Ltd., and was named one of Forbes Bulgaria’s 30 under 30 most influential people that drive innovation and progress.

Márk Szabó
Márk started his career at Microsoft in various roles ranging from Program Manager to Cloud Solution Architect while helping Hungarian startups and Independent Software Vendors scale on the cloud. He is a regular speaker at conferences about future technologies and their impact on our everyday lives in the next decades.

Judit Boros, PhD
Judit Boros is a design strategist and researcher at MOME Innovation Center, interested in the intersection of the designed and the natural world. She holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from Central European University. Her research investigates how design can contribute to sustaining and enhancing urban ecosystems.

Tamás Békási
As Business Creation Project Manager for the RIS Region in EIT Health, Tamás's top priority is to support and mentor European healthcare professionals from the ideation phase, through the market entry, to the global expansion, built on his expertise acquired in the past 15 years.

Péter Langmár
Péter is Chief Investment Officer at STRT Holding and Executive Board Member of Green Fox Academy. He is a tech entrepreneur with SAAS, education, IT consulting, and seed VC experience. His startup, Brickflow took part in the Estonian and Chilean accelerators.

Nóra Szeles
Nora is an award-winning economist, university lecturer at MOME, a capital market expert with intensive and extensive experience in financial services, known for the introduction of futures trading at the Budapest Stock Exchange and for launching equity crowdfunding, which is her central research domain.

Richárd Wenczel
Richárd is an experienced sales and business development professional with an extensive experience from startups to multinationals, from government to entrepreneurship. He is an acknowledged coach, currently working as Senior Manager at Deloitte and acting as Board Member of Startup Hungary.

Gyöngyvér Balog
Gyöngyvér is the co-founder and managing director of Impact Company, a social enterprise partnering with mission-driven organizations to provide meaningful work for underprivileged communities. Her communications career took her to Africa and the Middle East while working for the UN.

Alexis Latham
Alexis has been working as a communications trainer and coach for over 20 years, applying tools and techniques from the world of theatre and film. Simultaneously he is an established actor and runs his own theatre company, Scallabouche, where he works as a director and theatre maker.

Orsolya Galántai
Orsolya's been playing a significant role in founding, building up and leading an international leading future studies hub, Spark Institute. Coming from the creative field with 10+ years’ experience, having a background in corporate communication and marketing. Her career expands over several industries including finance, IT, and education.
Team
Events
Yes, anyone can apply regardless of your field of study, nationality, or university/workplace.
No, and your application would not be negatively affected if you apply alone. Having said this, we always encourage individual idea owners to proactively search for equality motivated persons who can offer a complimentary skill set.
All our programs are delivered in English. When it comes to the mentor engagement process in the incubation program, we leave it up to the mentor and team members to decide the language of communication.
All our sessions take place in-person on the university campus (Zugligeti út 9-25, Budapest 1121). When it comes to the mentor engagement process in the incubation program, we leave it up to the mentor and team members to decide if will take place online or in-person.
Our programs are offered to all Hungarians and internationals residing in the country, regardless of their age, nationality, university/workplace, and field of study, for example. Most of our incubation sessions during the autumn semester take place on Tuesday evenings. Please read the full Application Guideline for detailed information about the eligibility criteria and program schedule.
Our university’s Innovation Center has a limited fund to specifically support incubation projects with their prototyping, material purchases, and general product development. Only those projects who are already selected to participate in the incubation program are eligible to apply for funding from this fund. This application can only be initiated on the first kick-off day of the incubation program, and thereafter until the program ends.
One of the special benefits of our incubation program is that participants can access the facilities at our Technology Park. This includes workshop areas, studio, digital labs, media technology, and photo studios, for example. You can visit the website for more details here: https://mome.hu/en/facilities
The terms “business” and “startup” are often used interchangeably, but there very distinct differences, especially when considering their growth stage, goals, and approach. To summarise, a business is a general term for any organisation that aims to generate profits or offer products/services to customers. A startup is a specific type of business in its early stages, focused on fast growth and often bringing completely new ideas to the market. Startups innovate, scale quickly, and seek funding, while businesses can have various goals beyond rapid expansion.
International research suggests that there is a strong correlation between a company’s business performance and its design maturity. It is for this reason that our incubation program seeks to embed design thinking methodologies at an early stage of any entrepreneurial journey. For more information about the use of design in business, you can review our latest research report here: https://mome.hu/en/use-of-design-in-business-research
Self-motivated individuals and teams who can attend all the contact sessions, and who have clear and actionable goals with regards to how our incubation program can support their project team andproduct development. Anyone with a potential breakthrough idea or novel concept that has the potential to make an impact and address a (market) need in a unique or differentiated way. Projects that can clearly demonstrate how MOME can add value.
craig.johnson@mome.hu