The Smart Cities Marketplace is where ideas, solutions and best practices are shared and disseminated across the broad European smart city community. Through the Explore, Shape and Deal phases, project proposals are conceived, before becoming more mature and then fully-fledged. That way, they can be matched with a suitable investor at the end of the journey. The European initiative, coordinated by VITO, seeks to bring as many cities and municipalities as possible on board, including smaller ones.