The Challenge - Partnering to see through the clutter
Climate emergency, international geopolitics and the need for greater energy self-sufficiency have required increased momentum for the circular economy and energy transition, the two mainstays of A2A’s mission.
It is A2A Life Company's goal to contribute substantially to cultural and infrastructure changes in Italy and its communities. In order to achieve this, they need systematic and continuous innovation through their diversified business model and a portfolio of assets across the entire value chain of energy, the environment, and water.
How do they innovate?
A2A's idea of innovation is based on collaboration and joint participation within and outside the company. However, finding the right partner to solve niche challenges is difficult since thousands of startups are born, pivot, and die each month. It is extremely difficult to see through the clutter to find useful solutions.
In addition to identifying potential partners, the Venture Client Unit must coordinate dozens of stakeholders on multiple projects at once, making its job even more challenging. It is for this reason that A2A adopted GlassDollar Venture Clienting Operating System.
GlassDollar 🤝 A2A Life Company
Objective: Making Proof of Concepts (PoCs) with startups more efficient through GlassDollar Venture Clienting Operating System.
In 2022, A2A Life Company teamed up with GlassDollar to accelerate their innovation process.
A2A was able to streamline their process, reducing the time and cost of each Proof of Concept (PoC) and increasing the average ROI. A2A utilized the GlassDollar Venture Clienting OS, which combining AI and Big Data with the human intelligence of GlassDollar Venture Experts, to manage the PoC process end-to-end.
Through the GlassDollar platform, A2A's Innovation unit collected innovation challenges from various business units, autonomously searched for solutions, ordered flexible on-demand sourcing, and collaborated with GlassDollar and business units to identify the top providers. The platform allows A2A to connect with startups with one click, track the status and monetary impact of different PoCs, exchange votes/comments with relevant stakeholders.
Sourcing valuable startups has never been easier
In one year of collaboration, A2A Life Company conducted 16 sourcings on a wide variety of challenges from their organization. A few of the challenges were broad, so we created landscapes to get an overview of the market and the concrete possibilities. That enabled business units to specify requirements. Most were concrete directly, as the business units were actively working on that innovation challenge at the time. For all concrete challenges we created benchmarks to compare the top candidates for PoCs.
Looking into the future
Out of those benchmark sourcings, many potential innovation projects crystallized, the most promising for example in Innovative Public Lighting - reduction of energy consumption and maintenance costs.
Customer Voice
“We were looking for an innovative solution to quickly identify startups perfectly fitting our innovation challenges, and thanks to GlassDollar we found it.”
