Innovation: how to do it in a large company. In one of those companies that Alessandro Profumo, Leonardo's CEO, defined "elephants" and also referred to Francesco Starace, number one of Enel, confirmed to be "little inclined to innovate, especially from within". This was discussed on Wednesday morning at the Milan Polytechnic, the temple of Italian research, where patents have grown by 72% in the last three years.
In addition to Starace and Profumo, they were also present there'CEO of Poste Italiane Matteo Del Fante and that of Fs, Renato Mazzoncini. The CEO of Enel, who organized the event through his foundation, opened: “The first difficulty is that of the anti-innovative culture: the first rule for an entrepreneur is not to make mistakes, then, if anything, to take risks and innovate. This is the case above all in our market, the energy one”. The turning point was to link the scarcity of innovation to sustainability, so as to make innovation necessary.
Subcontracting it externally, where it is more agile than the structure of a large company and where specific professionals and young talents work, also able to guarantee a generational change which is often difficult in reality with many employees: “It's the so-called Open Innovation, open innovation, the one that seeks skills also externally, through horizontal collaborations with research centres, innovative hubs, universities and startups”.
The first step is to identify problems to solve and look for someone to solve them: "We have already financed 140 projects with external companies, in 35 cases these have already become spinoffs, real companies that innovate on behalf of Enel but not only" . With the result that even within the company, surpassing the old model of the R&D division, we end up creating an innovative spirit: “Going out and opening up to innovation has also brought out the innovativeness that was inside the company but which did not come out”, admitted Starace.
“Within a large group it is difficult to make disruptive innovation”, continued Renato Mazzoncini of Fs. “Through collaborations with external companies and with the Polytechnic itself we are, for example, already innovating the train maintenance system, thanks to the development of sensors that detect the actual wear and tear of the train and Big Data which, using a specific algorithm, can reorganize and optimize maintenance itself”.
That's not all: the recent merger with Anas is opening up new scenarios, such as that ofelectrification of suburban roads. A project that is already being tested in some Northern European countries such as Sweden, “where, moreover, even there the railway and road companies have merged. The E-Highway will allow trucks to transport goods by road as if they were trams or trolleybuses, thus helping to meet the objectives of COP21 which provides that at least 50% of goods are transported not by road by 2050. Today we are at 7%”.
Innovation also means collaborating and exporting know-how abroad, and Fs always knows something about it after the acquisition in the Netherlands of a company that builds electric buses: “By 2025, Holland will only register full electric buses. AND we have also bought the Greek railways, into which we will bring all the innovation acquired over the last 20 years: we make almost 2 billion in turnover in Europe, in six countries”, concluded Mazzoncini.
Open Innovation is also fundamental for Leonardo, who presented his own just yesterday industrial plan to 2022. The managing director Alessandro Profumo made no secret of it: “Open means stimuli from the outside, more freshness and vitality. Innovation means better, more efficient products. Customers no longer ask for beautiful products, but for services. When they ask us about helicopters, they ask us about guaranteed flight hours: technology means preventive maintenance”.
The prerequisite, according to Profumo, is dedicated investments: “We dedicate almost 12% in research and development, 1,4 billion a year, and almost one in four of our employees is an engineer. If anything, the problem is age, but open innovation can help with this too, with generational turnover”. Of those 1,4 billion, 5% is invested in pure technologies, 35% in new products and 60% in improving existing products.
“Then external collaborations are decisive – explained Profumo -: in 2017 we fielded 200 collaborations with universities and research centres, including foreign ones”. The great challenges of the future are defense and electric flying vehicles: “Defense at a European level, because either it is done at that level or it is not done. And then hybrid or electric propulsion for flying objects, starting with helicopters. A helicopter, except in some phases such as take-off and landing, can safely move with electricity".
Finally, as far as Poste Italiane is concerned, innovation is all linked to the evolution of digital payment systems. “We are investing in blockchain technology – said the CEO Del Fante -, we collaborate with 80 companies and startups, all Italian, in this area. 2018 could be the year in which Fintech and real finance will converge”.
