What’s new in the Porsche NEXT OI Competition 2019?
Last year, Porsche launched the first NEXT OI Competition together with startup HIGH MOBILITY, bringing the world of hackathons and startup collaborations to a whole new level.
The open innovation competition was a huge success: In 2018, more than 1000 participants from 50+ countries worked on 272 projects on a platform that’s open to everyone 24/7.
Now, the pre-registrations have been opened again and we’re approaching the launch of the second edition of Porsche NEXT OI Competition. This is why we met up with Andy Grau, Innovation Manager at Porsche, to ask him about the characteristics of this year’s competition, the role of the e-mobility and why he puts all his energy and heart into this project.
Andy, how did you come up with the idea of the Porsche NEXT OI Competition?
Basically, we wanted to bring the external world of technology into Porsche. The idea behind the competition is to develop groundbreaking ideas and bring them directly into Porsche cars to redefine the future driving experience for Porsche customers. To do so, it wasn’t enough for us to simply set up an email address, where everyone could contribute his or her idea. We wanted to provide a platform, where ideas could become reality in an instant. This is why we built an innovation platform together with HIGH MOBILITY, where teams and individuals have the chance to build and test their app using simulated Porsche sportscar APIs. The competition gives startups, students and innovators from all over the world access to a wide range of tools, systems and platforms, making it one of the most inclusive developer competitions in the world.
What’s new in this year’s Porsche NEXT OI Competition compared to 2018?
Last year, we didn’t put any frame around the competition. Our first year was a little like “Here are the tools and data, just go ahead and develop” — and we got a colorful bouquet of awesome ideas out of it. This year, we want to focus even more on the Porsche customer and the lifestyle around the car. Ask yourself: How can digital assistants and apps enhance our life around the car? We are looking for connected car apps that are specifically designed around real use cases at each stage of the journey, keeping in mind the customers needs. We’re focusing on the three different phases of a Porsche journey:
- Home: We’re looking for ideas related to connected home, IoT, predictive vehicle operations, charging and much more.
- Driving means everything about the driving experience: personalization in real time, games and interfaces, services on the go, smart vehicle, apps to increase productivity, health, comfort and convenience.
- Arrival: What are new concepts on making the arrival most comfortable when driving to work, a hotel or airport, what about switching to other mobility modes?
Another innovation to this year’s competition is the inclusion of new assets for an even better customer experience. Why shouldn’t we be thinking about an app that releases a drone in our trunk while we’re driving through the most beautiful landscapes on our roadtrip, just in time for the perfect sundown shot?
What role does e-mobility play this year?
With the Mission E Cross Turismo being available for app development on our open innovation platform this year, we’re not only adding a fully electric sportscar to the portfolio but also a vehicle for the active lifestyle. It’s designed for outdoor activities, exciting roadtrips and adventures. The Mission E Cross Turismo underlines the lifestyle idea of Porsche, which goes along with the focus on specific use cases in this year’s competition.
Why do you love the project?
Apart from all the wonderful ideas, the entrepreneurial spirit and the cross-functional collaboration, I love that we, as Porsche, found a way through the NEXT OI Competition to interact with suppliers, vendors, startups, students and so many more touch points that we’re meeting as a company. We know very well how a Porsche works and how it’s supposed to work, but that makes it even more important to exchange ideas in order to discuss. The competition enables us to do just that.
And it made me so happy to see this exchange coming to life last year at our first competition. Quickly, very diverse participants started to build collaborative teams all over the world to work together on the tasks. You could see how collaboration promoted creativity, faster progress, better results and more innovation. Even though it was a competition, there was so much exchange, collaboration and team spirit! It really amazed me and gets me super excited for this year!
What are you looking forward to the most?
I look forward to inspiring impulses from “outside”: to fresh ideas from students, professional concepts from startups and well-developed systems from suppliers. They’re good and important for a large company like Porsche. Because I believe that in the future, the classical supplier-customer relationship will no longer exist. Instead, there will be much more collaboration, a relationship at eye level and new technologies will emerge from working together.
Last thing: Tell us something that we didn’t know about the Porsche NEXT OI Competition.
You may have noticed already that the “OI” in NEXT OI Competition stands for “open innovation”, but did you know that it also stands for 0 and 1 in the binary system? ;)
Thanks, Andy!
If you’re a developer, start-up, engineer, student or supplier, get registered here and take your chance to shape the future of sportscars.
