Open innovation and startups: the new Scm Group’s road map
Nov 4, 2024The development of new business models also passes through research and collaboration with innovative startups that develop high-tech solutions capable of accelerating alignment with new market trends.
At Scm Group, scouting and partnering with startups, including through participation in business accelerators, is nothing new. In fact, the Innovation function has been operating for years with the aim of anticipating the production needs of clients in all business sectors, including through the selection of potentially strategic startups. What is new is that in addition to product and process, the group's innovation road map is also increasingly focusing on services and customer relationships, taking advantage of the extraordinary opportunities provided by digital transformation and AI in these areas as well, and here too from an open innovation perspective.
In what way? With what objectives?
We talk about this with the two professionals within the group who follow and coordinate this activity: Sara Iaconianni, scouting&idea generation manager, and Jaison Carlos Scheel, digital startup developer. If Sara deals with open innovation by looking at the potentially most congenial startup applications for efficiencies, feature addition, and product and process innovation, Jaison analyzes and develops relationships with the most interesting digital startups in the area of servitization.
Sara, talking about open innovation, what is Scm Group's approach?
“In recent years, thanks in part to a structured and dedicated corporate function such as Innovation, there has been a definite push in opening up to universities, research centers, business accelerators and startups that could give us a boost to develop interesting applications for our clients. One example is our participation for the three-year period 2021-2024 in Forward Factory, the CDP Venture Capital accelerator dedicated to startups that create manufacturing solutions.
So far our approach has been one of deep listening and analysis of the innovation landscape, always placing ourselves in the perspective of the customer and its benefits. However, we are now in a position to evolve our scouting activity and adopt a more proactive approach: the Scm Group has its own precise innovation road map, and it is from these objectives that we can start to punctually look for interesting realities, to be guided to accelerate innovative developments by exploiting emerging technologies and skills even outside our corporate organization.”
New approaches, but also new areas of scouting that look at service and digital. This is where Jaison Carlos Sheel comes in, and he does so from overseas, from Brazil, a particularly fertile ground for digital startups.
“It's true,” Jaison responds, “in Brazil alone, more than a thousand very creative and dynamic startups have been surveyed, capable of creating true innovation hubs and incentivizing new business development. I am not just referring to entrepreneurial projects still in an embryonic stage: these are highly advanced startups, especially in the digital field, a very interesting basin for us that extends to all of South America. My task, in synergy with Sara, is to foster and stimulate Scm Group's relationship with this ecosystem by leveraging both my transversal skills - a degree in Computer Engineering with various specializations, including a Master Degree in Design for Innovation oriented to start-ups - and my 20 years of experience in SCM's Brazilian subsidiary and in the entire South American market in various professional fields, from IT to management control, from Sales to Service Management.”
With what vision?
“With a precise corporate strategy:” adds Jaison, “Scm Group has been investing for years in the development of a model based on servitization and a continuous and shared customer relationship. To push the accelerator even further along this path, significant internal investments have been made on the after sales front, such as new Control Room services for proactive support. But the group wants to go further: I am meeting with several digital startups to evaluate possible opportunities.”
What areas are driving the scouting?
Sara: “Robotics, laser technology and 3D printing are three examples of macro-themes for which we are exploring open innovation possibilities, considering the high innovation potential that direct application of these technologies to our products and processes would have. We also have a high focus on all the applications that may be most interesting in the areas of sustainability, ergonomics, human-machine interaction systems and quality control of manufactured parts.”
Jaison: “MES solutions, ERP systems, CAD-CAM software and, as for the Innovation team, new applications enabled by the most innovative branches of AI, such as image and text analysis. Scm Group's goal, also in line with the new corporate function of Digital Transformation & Business Remodeling, is to be able to also provide customers with an increasingly rich and advanced digital software and systems offering to exponentially amplify production efficiency and enable our customers to easily leverage our technology solutions to 100 percent of their potential.”
Products, processes, services. Different application areas for a single purpose: to always put the customer, his production needs and business at the center with high value-added solutions.
