Workinlot helps companies identify emerging innovation opportunities and manage technology collaborations.

For the past 9 years, we have been offering 4 core services to address organizations' diverse innovation needs:

• Acceleration programs
• Opportunity and needs assessment studies
• Open innovation platform design and management services
• Year-round corporate innovation consulting services

Below, we will summarize the services we provided for different corporate objectives and the impact created.

Acceleration Programs

The purpose of acceleration programs is to identify startups suitable for the organization's needs and to develop appropriate solution proposals with the sponsoring organization in a short time. Rather than generic startup presentations, the priority is developing solution proposals targeted at the areas the program sponsor focuses on. The goal of presentation days held in factories and within organizations is to enable business units that will implement the solutions to interact with the startups from day one and ask questions. The structure of the ecosystem program presentation days is slightly different. The program sponsor not only wants to evaluate startups addressing their problems but also to see and assess the demands from other investors and companies for these startups.

Of all the acceleration programs we've organized to date, our Artificial Intelligence program generated the most startup collaborations, partnering with six different startups." The Industry 4.0 program tallied up the highest total investment.

Need and Opportunity Identification

New market dynamics of the information age, emerging consumer demands, and changing regulations indicate an increasing frequency of innovation across industries. Sometimes industry-specific companies, and other times solutions developed by companies from different sectors, initiate market transformations. Through scope development services, we help companies regularly evaluate developing opportunities and collaboration possibilities.

 

We identify opportunities and needs from 3 different sources:

1. Painstorming Workshops: Curation of insights about daily process challenges, competitive opportunities, and customer interaction insights with internal business units.

2. Ideation Workshops: We leverage design thinking principles to help employees develop new business ideas specific to the organization.

3. Industry Innovation Benchmark Studies: Research examining innovations developed in competitive environments in domestic and foreign markets, and startup collaboration methods.

Open Innovation Platform Design & Execution

Companies build open innovation platforms to address their innovation needs or identify new market opportunities. The purpose of these platforms is to ensure that external ideas, technologies, and expertise regularly reach the organization.

Criteria we pay attention to in the open innovation platform design:

• Creating challenge / call content that is inclusive for all stakeholders
• Digital infrastructure design for open innovation collaboration
• Governance mechanisms with clear intellectual property management
• Proof of Concept (PoC) based measurement processes for solutions

Open innovation platforms are among the strategic innovation assets of organizations that want to develop shared ecosystems with technology producers and other companies. These platforms create significant value through facilitating collaborations, reputation management, and generating business intelligence by analyzing the data produced.

Corporate Innovation Consulting

Through innovation consulting service, we identify new opportunities for companies and support their existing innovation & digital transformation activities throughout the year.

With this service:

• We facilitate interaction between business units and external solution providers
• We provide regular insights about market innovation opportunities
• We support the management and monitoring of open innovation collaboration projects with internal and external stakeholders

This year-round working structure enables organizations to move flexibly in innovation activities aligned with changing market and competitive dynamics. Corporate priorities can change rapidly and we have witnessed that creating a buffer zone between technology producers and the organization creates gains in terms of time and reputation for both startups and the organization.

Impact of Corporate Engagement on Startups

Our case studies aim to share the impact of open innovation for corporations.

Another way we can measure the value created in our open innovation services is by measuring the impact on engaged startups.

 

Recapping our open innovation initiatives since 2018:

• 1000+ startup applications were reviewed and detailed meetings were held with selected ones
• 22 startups completed successful collaborations and PoC projects
• Collaborating startups received over $23 Million in investment
• 5 startups expanded their operations internationally

 

Our Artificial Intelligence program created the most startup collaborations (6). 2021 marked our strongest year for investments with 11 secured. The Industry 4.0 program garnered the highest total investment value. Blockchain, image processing, and big data emerged as the leading verticals for startup collaborations.

We've integrated our core competency in open innovation opportunity identification and project management with the industry knowledge of companies we've partnered with across more than 15 sectors.

Let's connect to identify collaboration opportunities