Innovation is a Mindset that Must Not Be Stopped by Social Distancing
Last week, we would have invited startups and partners from across the world to visit us in our historic headquarter in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen for our Startup Autobahn Deep Dive. We would’ve heard live pitches and discussed innovative ideas and possible collaborations in personal 1:1 meetings on the promising topic of “New Luxury” here at Porsche.
As you all know, the current contact and travel restrictions didn’t allow for this to happen. This is why we moved the event into the virtual world. On June 18, innovation enthusiasts from across the globe joined our first fully virtual Deep Dive, including startups, partners and Porsche colleagues from Singapore, Shanghai, Tel Aviv & San Francisco.
“Innovation is a mindset that must not be stopped by social distancing” — Christoph Acker
To us, being innovative also means adapting to changing circumstances and finding solutions to problems we haven’t faced before. We believe that innovation is a mindset that must not be stopped by a crisis that forces us to socially distance.
Open innovation at Porsche
At Porsche, innovation is deeply rooted in our company’s history, heritage, and corporate culture. We started out as a small garage startup more than 70 years ago. Today, we build some of the most exciting sports cars in the world.
During the last decades, the way we innovate has evolved. We came to realize that we can’t shape the future of sporty mobility alone. We have to broaden our horizons, open ourselves up as a company, leave our comfort zone, dive into new technologies, communities and business models — and above all collaborate. We call this open innovation.
„We have to broaden our horizon, open up as a company, and dive into new technologies, communities and business models.” — Andy Grau
Connecting startups and corporates in a global manner
Over the years, we have developed and established a handful open innovation tools such as our open innovation competition NEXT OI, Partner Innovation Days, international scouting collaborations or the Startup Autobahn innovation platform. From the start of our partnership in late 2016, Startup Autobahn has developed to the biggest innovation platform in Europe that connects young entrepreneurs with established German corporates such as Porsche, Bosch or the DHL Group. The goal: to jointly develop prototypes within a 100-day program and drive forward the future of mobility.
During this time, we took part in eight program waves and operated more than 70 joint startup projects, of which nearly one quarter was implemented at Porsche. One thing that makes us particularly proud is that every department at Porsche already took part in an innovation project via Startup Autobahn: From R&D to Production and Purchasing, Finance & IT, Sales and HR. Startup Autobahn is a great way for us to bring innovation to our company and turn the entrepreneurial spirit into a tangible reality for all employees.
New potential in digital
Now that the Startup Autobahn activities had to be moved online and we organized the virtual Deep Dive, we quickly realized the even greater potential of this for our whole company: We were able to integrate more colleagues and network the Porsche Community globally, bring in many perspectives from the markets, minimize travel expenses and increase efficiency significantly. Furthermore, with the meetup streamed live in the entire world, the potential reach was boundless — and with almost 600 people joining, we can proudly say that we hosted Porsche’s largest Startup Autobahn Meetup!
Bringing the world together at Porsche
During the crisis, we have learned to work digitally and to get involved with digital formats. We can now acknowledge the many advantages of virtual events but were also reminded that there are aspects technology can’t transmit — such as personal encounters and networking. Overall, it’ll be about the balance between efficient, digital collaboration and keeping up the human touch in our digitized world.
For us, the virtual Startup Autobahn Deep Dive was a great success — mainly because it showed that boundless collaboration can succeed in smart digital formats. There were no distances to overcome, no limited seats, and almost no barriers. We are able to bring the world together, here at Porsche, in order to drive innovation. This is a goal we’ll never lose sight of — even in difficult times like these.
We hope you all enjoyed the tour! If you couldn’t join the event, you can watch it in full length here.
Christoph Acker and Andy Grau are Innovation Managers at Porsche AG.
About this publication: Where innovation meets tradition. There’s more to Porsche than sports cars — we’re tackling new challenges, develop digital products and think digital with a focus on the customer. On our Medium blog, we tell these stories. It’s about our #nextvisions, smart technologies and the people that drive our digital journey. Please follow us on Twitter (Porsche Digital, Next Visions), Instagram (Porsche Digital, Next Visions, Porsche Newsroom) and LinkedIn (Porsche AG, Porsche Digital) for more.
