Francesco Starace: Life after 23 years at Enel

As the CEO of Enel’s group since 2014, Francesco Starace was the main driver to turn the group into the major producer of renewable energy in the world. In this Mind the Chat we discuss about highlights (and possible regrets) of Francesco Starace's long tenure at Enel (23 years in total, of which 9 as CEO), the future of energy, the potential of key innovations in the field, and, lastly, about his next steps.

Open Innovation starts internally

Open Innovation starts internally

- “Think carefully how you promote, push and facilitate the deployment in house of external innovations. That’s where most of the corporates are not performing so well”

- “Do not start the innovation journey with the CVC. You need to have prior expertise working with startups”

In our Mind the Chat with Thierry we deep-dive into the innovation organisation and initiatives of the national postal service of Switzerland (a public company owned by the Swiss Confederation that is one of the largest employer in the country with 54,000 employees). From its intrapreneurship program (Postidea) to the innovation antennas (Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv and Shanghai) and CVC (Swiss Post Ventures).

“For us the CVC is also a pre-M&A tool.”

Swiss Post Ventures invests ahead of business and Open Innovation fosters collaborations between portfolio startups and business units. If it works and is strategic, they might acquire it, as they did with Bring!, the Swiss startup digitalizing the shopping list in Europe.

(Open) innovating at scale in the public sector

(Open) innovating at scale in the public sector

Buying innovative solutions is different than buying a table.
A different procurement approach is needed..
“Public organisations need to throw the Transactional approach out of the window and move to a Collaborative approach”
That’s the key message from Rikesh Shah, Head of Open Innovation at Transport for London. Rikesh has been behind many of the big innovations TfL has introduced in the past 20 years: the Smart ticketing, the Open data, the E-Scooters, the launch of an Innovation Hub (the first in the world for a public entity) and recently the Elizabeth Line.

“With the open data approach for every pound we spend, we get 130 back.”
It has not been a walk in the park though.
“There are big barriers but it can be done”. Some obstacles to be overcome include:
- Wrong definition of innovation (innovation is “not shiny things your engineers produce”)
- Solving the wrong problem
- Culture & Fear of Failure
- Poor Scouting (“solutions have to be searched globally, local on local is not a solution”)
- Ineffective testing
- Procurement

“The public sector can work with startups and must get a return. However there are multiple avenues other than equity. Equity does create a challenge in the public sector. Startups can create value and revenue with the public sector by having both their IP and equity protected”.

We can also work with the private sector. We initiated corporate partnerships with companies like Daimler,Bosch, and Waze. We offered them to use London as a test bed for deploying innovative solutions that can be commercialized in other cities”.

“There are 100+ sensors in a car. We can use those sensors (that are super expensive to buy) to identify and prevent road risks. This is an example of our partnership with Daimler Mercedes Benz. Now we are getting data from fleets, freights, cyclists…”.

More on the conversation between Alberto Onetti and Rikesh Shah.

“Innovation cannot be governed. It has to be connected.”

“Innovation cannot be governed. It has to be connected.”

My job as Head of Volkswagen Group Innovation?
“Organizing a central common innovation unit in a group with 10 different global brands and generating synergies. There are common tech challenges across the brands: decarbonization, software, autonomous driving, customer interface, …
Additionally companies need to be present in the main innovation hotspots, from Asia to Silicon Valley and Israel. We are there as a group.”
So says Nikolai Ardey, Head of Volkswagen Group Innovation, who also reveals the secret of Open Innovation.
“Landing innovation with the right level of maturity”, at least if you want to minimize the “not invented here” syndrome.
During the Mind the Chat Nikolai describes the different initiatives run by the group’s brands (Konnect Volkswagen Group Innovation Tel Aviv, Porsche APX Accelerator, Skoda Auto Digital Lab, Seat Start4Big) as well as provide insights about the $300M CVC fund dedicated to startups in the decarbonization space Volkswagen is about to launch. It will be an independent fund open to external LPs.

You need to have a strong business sponsor to deploy innovation

In this Mind the Chat Alberto Onetti sits with Alexandra Serizay, Chief Tech & Services Officer of Sodexo, French global leader providing catering, facilities management, employee benefits and personal home services to 100 million consumers daily in 53 countries.
Sodexo innovates both externally (partnering - through its Accelerators- with over 100 startups and scaleups from all over the world) and internally (leveraging bottom-up ideas from its own employees).
Main challenges? “Scaling startups inside the organisation requires overcoming cultural, procedural and IT integration challenges and properly managing expectations.”
At the end, whoever runs open innovation in large corporations needs to be capable of bridging the world of startups - that is used to move at warp speed - with the internal organization that has its own speed and pace.

Growing an internal venture is one of the hardest team sports

Growing an internal venture is one of the hardest team sports.

Why is it so hard?
Internally it is difficult to get the green light for innovation projects with a payoff in 10 years. And, since they will be burning money for a while, at the end they are perceived as a cost center. Then get ready for a constant battle inside the executive team.
But it is a battle that is worth fighting for. There is no alternative to innovation.

When to build a new venture inside the corporate environment?
- When the business case is good enough to run an independent company
- When you innovate outside the core business

Which metrics to be used to measure internal ventures?
- Ebit is not a good proxy (since they are burning money)
- Annual Recurring revenue are a better metric (installed products)

Which skills are required?
“You need somebody with the credibility to sit in a boardroom and the ability to work in a startup garage”.

This and more in the Mind the Chat with Daniel Szabo, CEO Körber Digital that has been recognized as “Rising Star” as part of the 2022 Corporate Startup Stars Awards. Co-hosting the chat Ralph-Christian Ohr, member of the CSS Judging Committee.

LG Nova: a new Venture Client model

LG Nova is among the new kids on the busy block of Silicon Valley based corporate innovation entities.
After the official launch of its first Innovation Festival, LG Nova has been extremely active looking for startup solutions in Digital Health, Metaverse & Gaming, Electric Mobility, Display Solutions, and Smart Lifestyle.
In our conversation with Sokwoo Rhee we cover the details of how LG Nova is structured, its macro objectives and relationships with other entities of the LG galaxy (ie LG Tech Ventures).

How to measure the impact of the Venture Client?

Open Bosch is the Venture Client Unit of Robert Bosch. It was launched in 2018 with the goal of leveraging the large deal flow generated by the CVC unit (RBVC, active since 2007 and now at its fifth fund) and providing innovative solutions to the groups’ business units. Today Open Bosch is one of the benchmark Venture Client organizations at worldìs level, as recognized by Corporate Startup Stars Awards.

In this Mind the Chat we sat with Johannes Grabowski, the leader of Open Bosch, and went through their experience of setting up and mastering a Venture Client unit. We analysed 200 projects. We identified 26 types of impact (make production leaner, hiring easier).

What’s interesting to the top management?

- Cost savings (we don’t need additional weeks for testing a solution)
- Enabled Revenue (there is no real way to calculate the startups’ contribution to revenue of new businesses since they are not the only source, the we cut and paste from the plan)
- Time to Market (how much time we save?)

Venture Building: 5 Lessons learned

Telefonica has been one of the first companies to have a Corporate Venture Builder. And a lot of things have evolved since Wayra Builder was launched 3 years ago.
Here are the top 5 learnings:
A clear investment thesis sets the objectives and rules of the game for everyone, including the investment committee
A good team and market validations are key.
Corporate assets are a strong differentiator. Leverage them!
Be always open for ideas from inside and outside
Instead of launching specific calls, join calls from others where you can take the opportunity to scout for ideas.
This and more from our Mind the Chat with Susana Jurado, Head of Wayra Builder at Telefonica that has been recognized with the Venture Builder Award as part of 2022 Corporate Startup Star.

Towards Intrapreneurship 2.0

7 years after the first edition, SAP is rolling-out the “Intrapreneurship Program 2.0”, including new elements such as:

- waved application deadlines (“multiple deadlines to provide more flexibility”)
- pre-submission workshops (“opportunity to find your co-founder”)
- ideation workshops along innovation strategy (“embed company long-term strategy into campaign scouting”)
- self-judgement to join demo days and interim stress tests (“ help employees make educated decisions”)
- regional and global validation pitches (“won regional leadership to support and amplify on our behalf, as well as have regional offices invest resources around Intrapreneurship”)
- stronger cross-collaboration with experts from SAP and existing ventures
- new KPIs (beyond “Overall Engagement” now “Global Intrapreneurship Incidence” and “Regional Inclusion” are tracked).

Over the years the Intrapreneurship Program significantly improved in terms of quantity and quality of ideas submitted and developed. As of today, about 20 projects entered the SAP Venture Studio (where they receive investments for €2M+ each). Currently 7 ventures are active, with one of the 2021 ventures (Encore) is already making headlines around the CatenaX initiative.
This and more in the Mind the Chat with Joachim von Goetz, Global Vice President and Head of Intrapreneurship at SAP.io

How to master the Venture Client model

Swiss Re open innovation strategy is based on two main pillars:

- Venture Client, for finding solutions to Horizon 1 innovation needs
- Venture Builder, for addressing Horizon 2 and beyond

“Venture Client is the perfect tool to deliver innovation to our organisation at the condition to do it right. Nowadays there are best practices. You just need to follow them”.
“We are use case driven”.
“The Venture Client model doesn’t need to invest into startups”.
“With Venture Builder you need to have a portfolio approach”.
“Venture Builders requirements? Speed and entrepreneurial spirit, that are difficult to be achieved inside a large corporation”.
This and more in the Mind the Chat with Peter Shulz, Senior Strategy Manager at Swiss Re.

DeFi, StableCoin and Silicon Valley: 3-in-1 Mind the Chat

Damian Scavo is a serial entrepreneur. His last venture, Axwave, was sold to the San Francisco based unicorn Samba TV.
In this Mind the Chat we discuss the entrepreneurial journey behind his current venture, StreetBeat (Stanford StartX graduate, recently closed $10M Series A), stocks&crypto “trading and algo-trading in simple app”.