#innovatenow: Recap Innovation Day with BuyIn
What opportunities do corporate companies have to break out of traditional structures and make room for innovation? With their unconventional methods and innovative business models, startups offer a change of perspective and fresh impulses. The company BuyIn has also recognized this for itself and visited STARTPLATZ on September 10th for an Innovation Day to experience the startup spirit and to integrate a piece of it into the everyday corporate life.
BuyIn operates in strategic purchasing for two major market players in the same industry and is a joint venture founded in 2011 with Deutsche Telekom and Orange, each with a 50 percent share. The company works along three central business areas: Network Technology, Devices & Platforms and Information Technology. The main focus during the Innovation Day was to gather new ideas from the area of procurement, but also to understand the paths and methods behind current startups.
The agenda was designed to prepare the participants for the innovative working environment around STARTPLATZ. Anna from STARTPLATZ started the day with an introduction round and gathered the expectations and wishes of the participants for the day. Further, STARTPLATZ was presented to the participants and a tour deepened insight into the premises and working atmosphere of the STARTPLATZ in the modern Mediapark in Cologne. Also, the participants learned how corporate companies could learn and benefit from startups.
Matching Startup Pitches
Three SaaS startups pitched their ideas, most of which fit into the Procurement & Sourcing area and were discussed in lively rounds of questions and answers.
First, Benoit Larrieux introduced the French company Silex, which offers an innovative sourcing solution to increase visibility and control within the sourcing processes and to reduce costs. This is made possible by a daily updated solution focused on big data, semantic analysis, and machine learning.
The second startup presented was Quidtree. Nick, Cofounder of the startup, introduced the participants to his out-of-the-box solution, which offers data transfer with an import and export button that can be integrated and is intended to save customers time and money.
Finally, Samir from Scalue appeared in front of the BuyIn employees. Scalue offers medium-sized companies a purchasing controlling solution, which tackles the problems of the unmanageable amount of data and low data quality.
Innovate.Create.Execute
After the lunch break, it was time to get back to work and now the participants themselves were challenged. Hamidreza from ECODYNAMICS led the Rapid Prototyping Workshop, a method that aims to develop creative and quick solutions to problems. In the case of BuyIn, the central topic was to develop scaling potential for its own business model.
The multitude of materials, ranging from clay and Lego toys to colorful building blocks and cotton balls, initially met with general skepticism. The participants could not imagine how the materials would be used to solve the problem. After the visitors were divided into 4 teams, each team was assigned one of the sub-topics:
- Strategy (Vision, Mission, Targets)
- Organisation & Governance
- Processes
- Systems & Support
The goal was to evaluate the current status and to work out which changes are necessary to make BuyIn scalable. After the participants were familiarized with the Rapid Prototyping method and the associated steps, it was a matter of visualizing the topics and building the solutions with the help of all the materials.
In the end, the solutions were recorded in 2-minute films and presented to everyone. The teams gave positive feedback to each other and coach Hamidreza was also enthusiastic about the results.
After reflecting and talking about the task and the results, the evening ended with a cozy get-together and the impressions of the day were shared. The BuyIn Innovation Day was a success and an excellent example of how agile methods and creativity can create a breeding ground for innovative approaches and problem solutions, no matter in which company.
You are a company interested in startups and would like to use the synergies of a cooperation? Please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or visit our page for Corporate Innovation.
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