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Digitalizing corporate innovation labs

Case studies

werk_39: The Corporate Innovation Lab

If werk_39 is the Corporate Innovation Lab powering B. Braun’s innovation strategy, then Verhaert Innovation Academy is helping to power the lab. But this is not a place to simply drink a coffee, brainstorm with post-its or host events. In cooperation with customers and partners, B. Braun business teams come to werk_39 to develop solutions that create added value for their customers – “beyond the product”. Precisely beyond the existing product range in areas of services, digital solutions and new business models.

 

The team of Venture Development Managers are supported by a Data Analyst, a User Experience Designer, an Operations Manager and a Startup Liaison Coordinator. Together, they support over 10 teams per year to find problem solution fit and product market fit. They consider themselves in-house experts in applying Design Thinking, Lean Start-Up and Agile methodologies but still accept they can be supported by externals to further advance what they do and to increase their capacity and deliverability.

From Tuttlingen to the World

werk_39 provides well-equipped team-project rooms in a one-hundred-year old factory in the center of Medtech Valley in Tuttlingen, Germany, where corporate entrepreneurs spend approx. 50% of their time with the lab’s staff. They believe that innovation can only flourish in safe psychological environments where the selected innovators rely on 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration (aka hard work). To learn how werk_39 could scale up its innovation lab and offer its services to more employees (they have 63,000 employees across 60 locations) in a purely virtual setting, they partnered with the Verhaert Innovation Academy who have been refining virtual innovation programs since 2014.

Corporate Innovation Labs can become Digital + Virtual = Global

The Venture Development Managers from werk_39 were able to shadow the Verhaert Innovation Academy innovation process being applied to a team under a completely virtual setting – over a period of 5 months under COVID lockdown restrictions. werk_39 were able to make 3 key observations that could be relevant for any corporate innovation lab:

Nr.1: Labs can increase capacity without needing more space: If the lab had no more capacity i.e. not enough Venture Development Managers to support teams, they could rely on Verhaert Innovation Academy to support teams through the innovation process that aligns with and improves their existing processes, including making prototyping resources available to teams.

Nr.2: Labs can serve all employee locations – anytime anywhere: werk_39 has 2 labs in Germany and is restricted to serving mostly local teams or team members who can travel frequently to the labs. By adopting the virtual set-up from Verhaert Innovation Academy (with it’s globally distributed mentors) they can serve teams anytime, anywhere.

Nr.3: Labs can increase efficiency with hybrid support: werk_39 staff recognized that they could maximize their time and effort by ‘outsourcing’ parts of the innovation process to Verhaert Innovation Academy leaving them free to manage more teams and apply their deep hospital industry expertise. Examples of outsourced elements are: 

  • Intrapreneur Personality Tests to help with screening, forming teams and providing self reflection to team members
  • Leverage latest E-learning modules and worksheets to educate teams on key innovation topics before, during and after the program
  • Leverage Verhaert Innovation Academy’s Prototype Fund Team to generate a range of fast experiments and prototypes when internal resources are tied up or become too slow. 
  • Offer teams specialized coaching for challenging innovation topics to enhance the internal mentoring already provided.

Future Corporate Innovation Labs

As we emerge from the limitations and lessons COVID has placed on us, it is clear that the virtual workplace and therefore the virtual innovation lab will play a vital role in the future of any corporate innovation or digital strategy. We therefore encourage corporate innovation labs to consider how they can expand from their physical setting and provide support to the ever increasing number of corporate entrepreneurs looking to test new services, digital solutions and business models.  


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Jan Kennedy, Founder


Location: Munich
Speaks: English, German
Specialty: World of Corporate Entrepreneurship
Fact: Created 1 Billion Dollars of Value as Intrapreneur at Intel

Jan Kennedy is an expert for Intrapreneurship program design. As founder of Academy for Corporate Entrepreneurship (AfCE) he overseaw the design and implementations of various Intrapreneurship Programs covering different stages of the Innovation Process for many Fortune 500 organisations. He is also a Director at the Founder Institute, the world’s largest mentoring program for early stage entrepreneurs launching over 1,000 companies per year with a 72% survival rate.

Born in Germany, grown up in the UK and lived and worked in Silicon Valley, Vienna, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Munich, Jan loved working with AfCE’s team of diverse global mentors. He can be found on stage at Intrapreneurship or Innovation Conferences or down in the trenches with corporate startup teams testing and validating critical assumptions. Jan also runs an investment fund focused on startups and crypto currencies.



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Narjeet Soni, Product Development Director


Location: Berlin
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Specialty: Agile Product Development

Narjeet is a a serial entrepreneur with his latest start-up valued at € 1.5 mil within 2 years. He is the founder and CEO of Lean Apps GmbH and acts as Head of Product Development at AfCE where he supports all of our participating teams with the AfCE Prototype Fund and Incubation Development Fund. He was also a Scrum Master at Infosys and Adidas.

Currently, he is focused on helping companies go through their Digital Transformation journey. Narjeet has been working with startups to learn, the ways of working that keep them agile and fast paced and has been implementing those learnings in the enterprise. He has successfully implemented Lean Innovation in Retail, Automotive and Insurance companies and has worked as an Agile Coach, Product Owner, Project Manager and Business Consultant as well as a Software Engineer at various Retail and Telecom customers.



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Aernout van Heusden, Business Development Director


Location: Madrid
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Fact: Been living and working outside the Netherlands for more than 25 years

Dutch born and a Spanish resident since 1999, with a wealth of experience in International Business Development & Sales within various industries and (mainly EMEA) countries. Senior background as entrepreneur, director, and as independent consultant having done projects (70% of those relating to Business Development and Sales) with start-ups till established multinationals.

Networker, public speaker, tech (SaaS, PaaS, Mobile, AR, Smart City) savvy, structured and loves working on solving company pain points.



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Maria Isabel Becerra-Noll, Finance Manager


Location: Munich, Germany
Speaks: English, Spanish, German, French
Specialty: Finance manager
Fact: Worked for the company that produced the Netflix series “Narcos”

Maria Isabel has more than 10 years of experience as Financial Analyst and Business Development Manager in a wide variety of industries. She is originally from Colombia, where she was born and raised. She has lived in Paris, Boston and now Germany. Maria Isabel holds an MBA from Babson College, the number one school for Entrepreneurship in the world.

Before moving to Germany in July, 2018, Maria Isabel worked in Bogota as Business Development Manager for the world’s largest infrastructure company, VINCI. In this role she was responsible of searching new concession projects and leading Due Diligence processes to acquire new concessions. Before this she worked for another infrastructure company, as well as a film production company and a marketing agency.

Maria Isabel is passionate about finance and numbers, enjoys working in teams and seeing the results of hard work.



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Stijn Smet, Managing Director


Location: Antwerp (BE)
Speaks: English, Dutch
Specialty: Innovation strategy and program design
Fact: Performed live on stage in front of 30.000 people

Stijn is an expert in innovation strategy & management. He consults various R&D and C-suite leaders in designing their innovation program and underlying governance structures. As the Managing Director at AfCE, Stijn can build on his pragmatic experience of heading corporate accelerator programs at Fortune500 clients.

With over 12 years of experience in innovation consulting, he has been leading Verhaert’s business innovation team where organizations and intrapreneurs were supported in developing their breakthrough products and services, from ideation all the way to market launch.

Stijn is a regular speaker at innovation conferences and co-authored the book Building Tomorrow, a pragmatic and systematic approach to tackling innovation challenges in the public sector.



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