## 1 Introduction
By leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and tokenomics, SPARK-IT creates a transparent, scalable, and inclusive environment that empowers innovators from diverse backgrounds to access mentorship, refine their ideas, and build viable business models. The platform integrates the business model canvas (BMC) as a structured tool for innovators to articulate their proposals for collaboration and specific guidance needs. This strategic management template allows innovators to map out and analyze critical aspects of their business ideas, such as key activities, value propositions, customer segments, and revenue streams. Through the platform, innovators can submit their BMC in an interactive or document-based format, highlighting areas where mentorship is required. By encouraging innovators to approach their ideas systematically and enabling experts to focus their guidance, the integration of the BMC fosters clarity, precision, and productive collaborations within the SPARK-IT ecosystem. At the core of SPARK-IT is its decentralized architecture, which ensures the security, traceability, and transparency of all interactions. Blockchain technology and decentralized storage underline the platform's key functionalities, including secure storage of proposals, immutable records of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and tamper-proof tracking of interactions between innovators and mentors. This creates a trusted environment where intellectual property is protected, fostering confidence among participants. The platform's AI-driven matchmaking engine enhances efficiency and personalization by analyzing innovator proposals and expert profiles to recommend the most suitable mentors. This dynamic and feedback-driven system ensures that each collaboration is tailored to the specific needs and expertise of its participants, thereby maximizing the potential for success. SPARK-IT also incorporates a dual-token system to incentivize meaningful participation and high-quality contributions. Reputation tokens reflect user performance and influence future matchmaking, while reward tokens have monetary value, compensating mentors for their guidance and expertise. This mechanism ensures sustained engagement and accountability while fostering a vibrant and trustworthy community. The modular design of the proposed solution allows for flexibility and scalability, making it adaptable to various use cases, such as startup acceleration, academic collaboration, and investment opportunities. By bridging gaps between innovators, experts, academia, and the private sector, SPARK-IT represents a transformative step in democratizing access to innovation resources and driving economic and social progress. The SPARK-IT platform builds upon and integrates existing methodologies and tools to create a robust ecosystem for innovation. The following section describes the state-of-the-art research and methodologies that serve at the base of SPARK-IT's design, focusing on the use of the business model canvas, AI-powered matchmaking, and secure information storage to establish a foundation for its novel contributions. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art approaches in business innovation platforms, expert profiling, AI-driven matchmaking, decentralized storage, and reward and reputation systems. Section 3 introduces the SPARK-IT system architecture, detailing its modular components, decentralized data management, intellectual property protection, and token-based incentives. Section 4 describes the design challenges and trade-offs, including balancing decentralization with usability, managing tokenomics in a permissioned blockchain, scalability, and the financial model design. Moreover, the socio-economic impacts are discussed when it comes to democratizing access to mentorship, enhancing trust in global innovation and potential use cases in academia and industry.