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Prysmian Group and Corporate Hangar: a winning open innovation formula

Prysmian Group works with Corporate Hangar on creating value by using start-ups to develop products and services adjacent to Prysmian’s core business, while enabling the primary goal of the company’s innovation strategy: to become our customers’ preferred cable solutions provider.

 

Prysmian Group’s goal of creating sustainable growth over time depends on its ability to help customers achieve their energy transition and digital transformation. Open innovation is a key part of achieving this goal, because it helps Prysmian Group add the technological and digital value adjacent to its core knowhow.

The term “open innovation” was coined by Haas School of Business Professor Henry Chesbrough in 2003 as a process whereby large companies looked outside their boundaries for innovative ideas and the skills to realize them, instead of the traditional “closed” in-house innovation model.  Open innovation, however, requires a trade-off: in exchange for speeding up the innovation process, companies must cede some of the day to day control and possibly even perhaps some intellectual property rights.

Prysmian Group found a way to deal with this trade-off in 2017 by founding an “innovation factory” called Corporate Hangar based on an idea generated during the Prysmian Group Academy training program. Corporate Hangar’s team of 13 entrepreneurs, university professors, engineers, project managers and designers works to develop projects born both inside and outside of Prysmian that are beyond the perimeter of its core cables business. This in turn helps inject an entrepreneurial culture into those Prysmian corporate functions that work closely with Corporate Hangar.

“With Corporate Hangar, we created a model whereby Prysmian Group can delegate a bit of decision-making freedom of the day-to-day innovation, without losing control of the results”

Markus Venzin

Corporate Hangar Managing Partner

 

Prysmian Group maintains an equity stake in Corporate Hangar and keeps intellectual property rights from the start-ups that are spun off by Corporate Hangar. To ensure good alignment of the group innovation strategy, Corporate Hangar is a key pillar of the Group Innovation Steering Committee which is tasked with the group innovation portfolio management as well as building new competencies for future growth.

“To me the competitiveness of this model is that these start-ups are created in very close contact with Prysmian’s internal functions,” explains Markus. “We are supported by digital, logistics, and sales force teams at Prysmian. This is open innovation, but the closeness to our first and biggest customer means it is very improbable that these start-ups fail.”

For Luca De Rai, Prysmian Group R&D Energy Director, open innovation with Corporate Hangar and other companies in its ecosystem is a way to enrich the group’s existing portfolio with new functionalities to add value.

“At R&D, we are more focused on creating core technology platforms aligned with business unit growth strategies, whereas Corporate Hanger helps us to scout for new technology providers as well as add fresh insights during customer innovation workshops”

Luca De Rai

De Rai a Vice President - Energy R&D and Innovation

Carlotta Dainese, head of the Digital Innovation Lab, says open innovation and accessing digital knowhow outside the company gives her the speed she needs to stay on top of changes in the tech industry.

In the past, when producing or innovating a cable we looked at the medium and long term,” says Carlotta. “But now if we want to add digital into the mix, the time frame is certainty shorter. Technologies, connectivity, the tools, the Internet of Things, everything is evolving so rapidly. Speed is key to success.”

Carlotta Dainese

Head of the Digital Innovation Lab

The startup Alesea is a good example of how Corporate Hangar helps Prysmian Group respond to customer feedback. The idea for a smart device installed on the cable drum, letting customers track where the drum is and how much cable it contains, came from voice of customer during a site visit. Corporate Hangar coordinated several tasks from creating the prototype, building a comprehensive business case and managing customer validations ultimately resulting in a start-up. The best part of this journey is the collaborative approach with engagement from Prysmian Group functions including Supply Chain, R&D and Digital Innovation team to provide the best possible outcome for our customers.

Being part of Corporate Hangar also allows for young talents from Prysmian to hone their entrepreneurial skills. When these talents return to Prysmian for future roles, they inject their learnings on collaboration, customer engagement and business case development to their teams. Corporate Hangar coordinated the first Prysmian Group Innovation Contest which was successful in generating close to 500 new ideas from Prysmian employees in important future growth areas such as Sustainability and Servitization.