In 2015, ENGIE’s Innovation Week made a big splash! What did you take away from the experience?
The first edition gave us the opportunity to up the ante a little less than a year after we began doing events and providing tools for open innovation. And its success exceeded our expectations!
120 events were held in more than 20 countries across the world, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for the operation overall. With internal and external events, competitions for startups, marketplace events, hackathons, the launch of calls for projects, and visits to symbolic sites in the world of innovation, the week was very busy and full of discoveries.
So what are you expecting for ENGIE’s Innovation Week 2016? This time we are going to expand the scope of the event and get our partners and employees even more involved.
More than ever, we want to demonstrate
how the culture of innovation is flourishing at ENGIE throughout the world.The events scheduled will take place on different continents, in dozens of countries, from China to Chile, without forgetting our old Europe.
One of the main highlights of Innovation Week 2016 will be the
focus on partnership: the events will be more mixed than last year and will involve employees, local partners, industrial and academic partners and local communities.
In the space of a year, Innovation Week has earned a very high profile: this year
it’s going to be "the place to be" from June 6th to 10th! What are the main events that will take place during Innovation Week 2016? Like last year, the
Innovation Awards ceremony will be one of the highlights, though this year will be even better. 500 employee projects were submitted last year; this year there are 600!
And just like in 2015, the ceremony will be preceded by a marketplace event to showcase the finalists’ innovative projects, which will be broadcast live on OpenInnov.
There will also be
two major events abroad over the course of the week: the ENGIE Innovation Award in
Brazil, and an event in
Belgium.
There will also be
1 or 2 big events in the US, probably in Boston and San Francisco.
And of course, Innovation Week will also involve the
launch of several calls for projects around the world. They will give startups and innovative companies the opportunity to submit solutions to help ENGIE solve business and technical issues, and potentially to have their proposals included in ENGIE projects worldwide, giving them development prospects and higher visibility.
The complete agenda can’t be released yet, but here are some dates to remember: Each day of the week will focus on a theme:
- Monday, June 6: Business: innovating for performance
- Tuesday, June 7: The new age of renewables
- Wednesday, June 8: The City 3.0
- Thursday, 9 June: Reinventing our daily lives
- Friday, June 10: What's new in gas
Starting in early May, innovations from throughout the Group will be showcased on the OpenInnov platform and
the Innovation Week will be inaugurated on June 6th by Isabelle Kocher, ENGIE’s COO.
Everyone should also be aware that one of the goals of Innovation Week is to promote communication through videos, the web and social networks. All of our events will be filmed and most of them will be broadcast live on OpenInnov.
So you don’t miss any innovations, a daily newsletter will be sent our every morning to all of our subscribers during the week.
Thank you Stéphane, and see you soon to learn more about a week that promises to be very exciting!
