Continental Industry  – Creating a Powerful innovation platform for mutual support

Description of the company

Continental develops pioneering technologies and services for sustainable and connected mobility of people and their goods. Founded in 1871, the technology company offers safe, efficient, intelligent, and affordable solutions for vehicles, machines, traffic and transportation. In 2018, Continental generated sales of €44.4 billion and currently employs more than 244,000 people in 60 countries and markets.

Situation

Most companies are developing their innovative ideas (processes, products and business models) completely internally. Very often they lack expertise and the right team members to mature an idea and to evaluate its likelihood of success in the future. Not a single company can know everything it needs to pursue innovation ideas, but how to overcome this lack of knowledge? Certainly get the right people on board and train the staff, but there are more innovative ways to get there in a partnership approach based on mutual benefit for the participating partners. The idea is to create a cross-company innovation platform. Each partner “pays” in certain contribution hours of their experts who can be booked by other participants of the platform….free of charge up to the level they paid in. As an example: 5 companies “pay” in 20 days of their experts in certain areas like AI, IoT, market knowledge, etc. As one of the 5 companies advances with their innovation project, they might need an expert on a field offered by another company. They will be able to “use” up to 20 days of expertise from the pool, as much as they paid in. This concept is therefore a mutual consulting concept, based on a give and take. Both parties have only advantages.

Problem

Digital transformation and new technologies increase the speed and the need of innovation. At the same time more market and technology know how is needed. Training is an option or expensive consultants. Idea is to use the power of the network to create a non-profit platform for mutual benefit.

Aims of the project

• Create a proposal for an innovation platform gearing for a non-profit cooperative support system
• Create contents and mock-ups for platform
• Create governance structure and processes for platform

Scopes

• Hamburg Ecosystem with the possibility to extend beyond and scale globally
• Include potential participants with personal interviews

Target group (students)

• Software development
• Business Administration 

Dates

Please reserve these dates: Fishing for Experience Termine

Registration

You can apply here for Fishing for Experience.