AN OPEN TALK ON OPEN INNOVATIONS

The sharing economy is now a trend in different industries, but does it make sense for open innovation too? To answer this question, we've gathered representatives from major tech corporations together at EMERGE 2021.

Artemiy Kruglov, Head of the VISA Moscow Innovation Studio, absolutely believes it does and says that VISA bases two open innovations programs on this principle: one is co-creation sessions, where the company, its partners, and end-users create solutions together; another is VISA Everywhere Initiative, which has been recently launched in Russia and operates all over the globe. The Initiative focuses on scouting and accelerating such startups, who develop solutions needed by VISA and its partners. The result would be a pilot project, where all three sides participate.

Acceleration programs at Orange Business Services Russia has a somewhat similar approach, says Vitaly Shtyrkin, the company's Director of Investments & Innovations and the head of startup accelerator Orange Fab Russia, who moderated the roundtable. He believes that Open Innovation programs run jointly by few corporations in co-innovation accord increase efficiency of this work and significantly improve chances of successful discovery, assessment, testing and piloting of startup-sourced innovations.

According to Vitaly Shtyrkin, Open Innovation in Russia is very mature and is widely used by many corporations. Corporations often have their specifics and focus areas, but interactions between startups and corporations remains a critical part of the process for all. The availability and maturity of startups are different from industry to industry, as are the target market characteristics for startups in those industries. That makes it even more attractive to follow co-innovation opportunities by corporations in different sectors, yet players on the same value chain.

Not only startups should collaborate with corporations on developing innovative solutions, though. Artemiy Kruglov shared that sometimes students come to VISA to offer something they created but cannot find the practical use of. Academy is a powerful partner for innovative companies, and you'd better learn the language it speaks (which implies having an academic on your team), notes Marina Solovyeva, CEO Valenta Digital. You should also adjust your processes to the way universities make decisions. Finally, if it's a cross-border collaboration, better seek governmental support (as it now happens with South Korean and Russian academic projects).

What is especially interesting about working on open innovations with universities, says Marina Solovyeva, is that they are more about a core meaning of technology. And companies are more about business. This intersection of competencies creates the right energy.

Pharma, food industry, agriculture, mining – just some areas for which scientists currently develop innovative solutions. Interestingly, pharmaceutical businesses have to consider a patent potential which a solution has got as the industry is tightly connected to intellectual property, says Marina Solovyeva. So, the safer the project, the higher the interest from investors.

Oleg Laktuyshin, IT Director at Metalloinvest, highlights that each project has its efficiency calculation model. His experience shows that tracking the project's success within middle milestones helps understand the project's overall success. Though, he believes that it is a forced measure because when it comes to innovations, you cannot wait for a couple of years to determine the success of the implementation.

Vitaly Shtyrkin notes that at Orange Business Services, they believe that working jointly in the rapidly changing world of technologies and business models allows to cover a broader range of potential areas of innovation and use all the opportunities of open innovations most efficiently.