Enel was awarded the prize 2019 Corporate Startup Stars Award as the most active company in Open Innovation in Europe. Specifically, Enel leads the Top 12 SEP Europe's Corporate Startup Stars, a ranking of large companies that produce concrete results in terms of collaboration with startups. SEP evaluated over 50 European companies, declaring Enel the winner for its excellent results in collaborating with startups around the world. The company also won the award 2019 Corporate Startup Procurement Award by virtue of its excellent relationships, in terms of purchases, with the most innovative startups.
“These awards – he said Francesco Starace, Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Enel – once again confirm our leadership in innovation. Already in 2015 we defined our approach to Open Innovation, combining innovation and sustainability in what at the time seemed a rather unique combination. The result has been a phenomenal synergy effect that has generated value for us and for our stakeholders, including startups and the communities around us. For the future, we aim to further increase our efforts in open innovation to transform Enel into a fully digital and platform-based company, with the ultimate goal of maximizing the value generated by the energy transition and electrification of consumption."
Enel has created a global network of 10 Innovation Hubs in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Chile (Santiago), Israel (Tel Aviv), Italy (Milan, Catania, Pisa), Russia (Moscow), Spain (Madrid), and the United States (Boston, San Francisco), to identify startups with significant potential in terms of technologies and business models relevant to Enel's business. Since 2015, when Enel set up its "Open Innovation" approach, using innovation from external sources, the Company has received around 10 collaboration proposals, 6500 of which from startups, realizing a total of around 650 projects, of which around 250 from startups. Thanks to Enel, more than 50 startups have grown to global dimensions. Among the main sectors in which the company collaborates with startups are the storage, the big data, energy management, smart home, electric mobility, IoT, predictive maintenance, artificial intelligence, technologies smart and robotics.
The companies that have received a SEP Corporate Startup Stars recognition are those that have been able to establish the partnerships most successful and most mutually beneficial with startups, through procurementlicenses, partnerships, accelerators, direct investments, acquisitions or other specific programs. Other awards presented during the event, in addition to the Corporate Startup Procurement, also won by Enel, include the Corporate Startup Accelerator Award, the Corporate Startup M&A Award, the Corporate Startup Investment Award, the Innovative Program Award and the Best New Entrant Award.
SEP Scaleup Summits are exclusive meetings between companies, organized by Mind the Bridge, a global innovation consultancy firm, held at the main European stock exchanges, where international groups and investors can meet scaleups, i.e. innovative companies that have already developed their own products and/or services, which are already operating on the market and aiming to expand.
“The selection board – he commented Alberto Onetti, president of Mind the Bridge and coordinator of SEP – truly appreciated the substantial impact Enel is having on global startup ecosystems, particularly in Europe. Enel is concretely helping several international startups to grow in size and access international markets. Our research confirms that startups need good business partners to scale up. As we often say: one euro in procurement is worth more than hundreds of euros in funding.”
