Innovation can and must be something concrete. For this reason, when Maria Vittoria Giancolaat the end of 2022, inherited the responsibility ofPrysmian Innovation Lab founded 5 years earlier, it decided to focus on one objective: making the laboratory a tool for concretely bringing innovation into the company. All this in the context of a new approach aimed at increasingly forming a digital mindset within the Group, betting on dialogue between young people and seniors and on collaboration with external entities in the name of open innovation. His job title speaks clearly: Digital Strategy and Business Partners Directoras well as, as mentioned, responsible for the Innovation Lab.
Already a manager at TIM, Kena Mobile and Lyca Group, Giancola has several years of experience in digital development and innovation leadership, acquired both in large companies and in the startup ecosystem. For a year and 5 months he has brought this experience to Prysmian, a world leader in the energy and telecommunications cable systems sector and committed to the energy and digital transition. Of the activities undertaken in the company to date he tells EconomyUp: “Innovation is not a disorderly process, you need to be able to measure it and channel it. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
The challenges of innovation at Prysmian
What are the main challenges for promoting innovation in the company?
When I joined Prysmian, in December 2022, I noticed that the Lab’s activity was largely focused on experiments very close to the world of research, sometimes almost an end in itself, and on long-term projects on technologies with still applicability uncertain, like blockchain or machine vision. This cutting-edge focus intrigued me, but my challenge was to connect the innovations with the most urgent needs, to improve daily operations. I therefore started working on a strategy and an operating model that would give digital back its role as the company’s driving force with the aim of creating immediate value. From here the BODI strategy was born, which emphasizes the company as a single organism in motion supported by digital, and is based on four pillars: Business-driven, Open innovation, Digitalization and Measurable impact. An approach that aims to look at the market in terms of needs and opportunities, digitize processes to simplify the way of working, promote digital culture and, above all, measure the impact of our actions in economic and sustainability terms, creating a bridge with corporate language. Innovation at Prysmian must speak the same language as the value and efficiency that characterizes the company, to face digital transformation, a complex but necessary challenge even for a company at the top of the market.
Prysmian: how the Innovation Lab works
What are the objectives of the Innovation Lab today?
Its activity focuses on three main objectives. The first is to increase awareness of new technologies within the company by supporting digital culture programs. This includes the organization of workshops, academies and the dissemination of content also via digital channels, such as mobile broadcast, regarding current technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, robotics and more. To facilitate this process, a community of globally distributed “Digital Local Partners” has been created, who, through continuous training and gamification mechanisms, help disseminate technological knowledge within the various Prysmian offices. These employees, selected both on a voluntary basis and by their superiors for the interest and curiosity demonstrated towards these issues, are involved in experimentation initiatives and digital projects. It is, in fact, a community that has become a living and consolidated element within the company.
Who are the “Business Partners” in your job title?
They are very senior figures who have a profound knowledge of business-related issues and who aim to transform the needs of our internal and external customers into solutions. One of the changes I brought to the working group concerns the role of “sparring partner” that the Innovation Lab plays, supporting business partners in the design and development of digital solutions, combining their in-depth knowledge of the corporate footprint with that of new technologies.
Concretely, I supported each business partner with an expert from the Lab. This allows for a close collaboration in which the Lab brings specific skills on new digital technologies, while the business partner brings knowledge on the processes, the dynamics of the business but also the legacy constraints to be respect. This approach has transformed the new digital team into an interlocutor with complete know-how and high credibility, capable of proposing solutions combined with the best technologies to address specific needs.
Did the youth-senior collaboration work?
I would say yes. The objective was that the members of the Lab were not only seen as technological experts, but as figures capable of offering an open vision of the market, thus also enriching the business partners and in turn benefiting from the latter’s more structured vision of the company . This collaboration has generated value and a fruitful exchange of skills, making the young people of the Lab indispensable partners in corporate discussions and a more cohesive team.
The team continues to work on prototypes and pilot solutions, placing them in a context of scalable projects from the beginning, maintaining a healthy logic of experimentation but with an eye on the potential for industrialization. This change of direction aims to materialize the innovation, making it applicable and practical for the company. In essence, the Innovation Lab today acts as a bridge between advanced research and the practical application of technologies, establishing the fundamental pillars of its work.
The governance of innovation
How is innovation governance organized at Prysmian?
It is very structured, with clear rules for managing and developing the portfolio of innovative projects. There is a structure called “Steering Committee Innovation”, led by our Chief Innovation Officer composed of five main elements: the Digital Innovation Lab, R&D focused on product innovation, the Sustainability area, EOSS (a 100% Prysmian which deals with asset monitoring), and Corporate Hangar, the company’s venture builder. The latter has the task of transforming ideas, both internal and external, into operational startups. This governance allows innovation to be addressed in an organized way, contrary to the idea that it can arise from random processes. The group’s work was reviewed and perfected after my arrival, ensuring more effective management of initiatives, greater synergies and more fluid communication
How does Corporate Hangar work?
Corporate Hangar, in which Prysmian holds a minority stake, supports the company in the development of new entrepreneurial initiatives starting from the initial idea up to the creation of startups, as happened for example with Alesea, the first startup to emerge from the Innovation Lab. An innovative reality that proposed a solution composed of an intelligent device installed on a coil, a cloud infrastructure for data storage and processing and an intuitive web platform.
What are the relationships between the Innovation Lab and the Corporate Hangar?
There is a close collaboration, maintained through continuous contact and mutual updates. We are part of the same Executive Steering Committee that meets weekly to discuss shared opportunities and projects. We work together both on specific initiatives and on updating and alignment mechanisms, useful for clearly defining the topics to explore and the opportunities to evaluate together.
We are currently working to propose a way to make the process of collecting ideas within the company even more effective, which we already implement through periodic “call for ideas” initiatives. The objective is to structure this process as a continuous flow: it is a significant challenge given Prysmian’s global reach and the need to guarantee a precise analysis and feedback mechanism to maintain high credibility, a key value for us.
Prysmian and startups
Within the startup landscape, which sectors and which topics have received attention in recent months?
We explored various themes, including artificial intelligence and the metaverse, but in particular, we focused on areas related to the world of manufacturing, quality and safety, i.e. industry 4.0 and 5.0. Manufacturing is the sector in which we have been most active and sensitive because it is there that we can really create the most value. With over 100 plants located in 50 countries and a history of acquisitions, we look for solutions that simplify certain aspects or enhance our data and process analysis capabilities. We are focusing a lot on artificial intelligence models that can offer endless opportunities, especially in the fields of business analytics and data analysis.
With the recent acquisition of the Texan Encore Wire, what prospects do you see for open innovation at Prysmian?
It is too early to outline the impact of the acquisition, as the news is very recent. Prysmian has an important history in this area having successfully completed two important acquisitions in the recent past, General Cable and Draka. As always in these cases, it will be essential to move quickly in the integration process, especially considering that the North American market plays a key role in business strategies.
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