Like many other business functions and systems, manufacturing, supply chain and production systems are not spared a constantly changing market environment as a result of technological change and are therefore subject to continuous evolution. This is made possible by smarter manufacturing, advanced robotics and cyber-physical systems, but also by the application of AI algorithms and location recognition to ensure intelligent supply chain processes. A changing world. And HYVE right in the middle!
A fresh breeze to innovation and agility
In view of technological developments, current trends and volatile market conditions, the automotive industry is faced with seemingly impossible tasks. As one of the leading suppliers to the automotive industry, the Continental technology group must also face megatrends such as digitization, robotics and industry 4.0 and develop new solutions for itself and its customers.
To counter these trends, in addition to a cooperation program for external startups and Continental’s own venture capital unit, there is also an opportunity for its own employees to incubate their concepts, accelerate them to market maturity as quickly as possible and scale the resulting business models. The co-pace “Incubator” acts as an incubator for the ideas of Continental employees. The teams are supported in this by process and method competence as well as by a multitude of subject-specific expertise (e.g. AI, Research, UX/UI, etc.).
The co-pace Incubator 2019
The new edition of the incubator was initiated by co-pace together with HYVE. Not only the numerous, valuable concepts of the own employees were collected to identify currently relevant pain points and key technologies, but also to use them as a basis for concrete and scalable solutions. In addition to the submitted concepts, highly motivated employees also applied to help as “intrapreneurs” with the continuous further development of the ideas. During the incubation, the user-oriented evaluation and development of the concepts played a special role in order to ensure a problem-solution fit at all times. But also the practicability of the solution was forced, be it by a detailed technological elaboration of the solutions, software developments, strategy development and of course by the respective business models.
The aim of this joint incubator was, together with HYVE, to transform innovative concepts into scalable service and product innovations. For this HYVE chose a 5-step approach. How can this succeed? You can find this out in our whitepaper.
Incubation‘s done! What’s next?
In order to avoid the well-known stumbling blocks of reintegrating ideas that were developed outside the usual corporate structures, all relevant stakeholders were involved in targeted pitches and discussions about the best next steps.
