One of the pillars of the innovation program at ENGIE is instilling the culture of innovation: to exchange information, to create awareness and share experiences and most importantly to collaborate- as innovation can only be a product of collective intelligence.
This is a challenge, as ENGIE is a very large organization operating in 50+ countries. When you have a vast landscape of activities and geographies innovation is going to be local and everywhere; We have a corporate venture fund ENGIE New Ventures, incubators (ENGIE Factories) and other types of innovation/incubator/excubator structures in various BUs and geographies, a digital platform dedicated to open innovation, a network of innovators, and last but not least the Innovation Trophies.
Q- Can you tell us more about the Innovation Trophies?
This program was established 35 years ago but has had quite an overhaul 6 years ago. In 2020, we received 540 entries from 25 business units in 42 countries. This means every Business Unit, and most countries participated -it shows there are clear incentives to take part. These projects are not only internal. Some have been developed with external startups, with suppliers or other partners, showing that collaborative innovation is really starting to take hold.
Managing so many entries every year is a challenge, but it is also a real strength, since It gives us a view into what is happening in the Group. It also helps us to spot if there are similar or overlapping projects and get the business units to collaborate more.
Q: Can you give us an example of internal project that has won a trophy?
About three years ago a small team in our Global Energy Management (GEM) division noticed that due to a heightened awareness of climate change, customers were more and more interested in certifying the origin of the energy they are using. They came up with TEO (short for The Energy Origin), which relies on blockchain to track renewable energy sources and securely record the information so it can’t be manipulated. The idea and an immediate acceptance by a few key customers earned TEO ENGIE’s Innovation Trophy in 2018 and a commitment from the company’s New Business Factory, together with the GEM business unit, to help incubate and scale up the new business. TEO’s mandate was expanded to include not just electricity but also the origin of gas and hydrogen.
After two years of incubation at Station F in Paris TEO has now become a part of the GEM’s Business Platform for Innovation – a platform for creating GEM’s future. TEO’s offering provides the securitization and verification of renewable energy production: providing geo-stamped renewable production credentials and the automatic issuance of production-consumption green certificates and carbon credentials for an extra fee. It has already generated a half a million euros in revenues.
Q- What are you next challenges regarding the Innovation Trophies?
We want to go beyond the annual trophy ceremony. It is nice to have a selection process and trophy award winners but that doesn’t guarantee their success. Those teams need further support to succeed. They need to be able to market their solutions to the external world, or replicate them across business units within ENGIE. My team is responsible for helping them develop in this endeavor through providing communication, contacts and networking and entrepreneurial skill sets. Being an engineer working in a corporate environment is different than being an entrepreneur in a startup. It requires different competences. This is why we have created a project based on open support with a number of other entities within ENGIE. This is a win-win offering as these projects could help those supporting entities reach their respective deliverables, while providing growth opportunities to these innovation projects. This is also a way of gauging real business impact through established KPIs, instead of creating new ones.
We are also offering a learning program with customized coaching through ASPIRE, an online program helping teams acquire startup skills and methodologies with personal mentors and coaches from the external start-up world.
Q: What do you consider to be your greatest successes?
The quality of the projects submitted for innovation trophies is getting better every year. The projects are more and more collaborative, multi-country and include external contributors. We have seen it grow into something that I think is truly an example of open innovation and we can be really proud of that. We have created and grown an active innovation community with ambassadors in all business units who are helping to shape this ecosystem, and through all of our activities we have created an image for ENGIE of being seen as a truly innovative company – achieving a perfect ‘Innovation’ score this year within the RobecoSAM rating -. This makes us attractive towards the external ecosystem, giving us more opportunities for collaborationand learnings.
