Context 

We transformed a leading mineral supplier’s approach to innovation by helping them transition from a siloed R&D model to a comprehensive open innovation strategy. The company had been engaging with startups through isolated business units, which limited their potential for collaboration and growth. Our team was tasked with structuring a future Open Innovation department, identifying the appropriate vehicles for engagement, and determining how to organize them effectively. Through tailored workshops and our proprietary methodology, we guided the strategy team in clarifying their innovation objectives and developing a robust portfolio of initiatives.

Mission

• Carried out an audit on their knowledge of the different vehicles available at hand
• Definition of the objectives of the future open innovation department in line with the group’s strategy
• Evaluation of the different vehicles to meet these objectives
• Selection of 5 complementary vehicles to form a portfolio
• Definition of a ramp-up roadmap (walk, run, fly) for the deployment of these vehicles and associated human resources
• Support in the design of the future governance

Key figures

Context 

With over 1 million startups operating in the world, it takes time and expertise to build a robust deal flow. Yet, its quality is the cornerstone of success of Open Innovation, CVC, M&A and Strategy teams.

Aster Fab’s mission was to build for our client a robust startup deal flow from scratch, and then, throughout the last four years, to be in charge of qualified deal sourcing.

Mission

• Mapping of the topics and technologies of strategic interest to the group
• Selection of 10 topics to carry out deep dives on throughout the year
• Technology studies to deepen the group’s knowledge of a given technology and analysis of weak signals: technology analysis, patent analysis, fundraising analysis, competitor benchmark, mapping of the startups populating the space, etc.
• On-going outbound sourcing on strategic topics
• Qualification calls with the most promising startups
• Bi-monthly presentations to the client of qualified startup opportunities

Key figures

Context 

In a context of growing importance of EVs, our client’s core business (lubricant supplier) in thermal systems was set to be disrupted.

Driven by the belief that startups are a goldmine for its profound transformation, the client’s Innovation department wanted to explore the opportunity of creating a CVC.

Aster Fab’s mission was to support the client in its thinking and design the presentation to the board.

Mission

The final deliverable was structured in 4 steps:

• Benchmark and best practices to give the client food for thought on the variety of CVCs that exist and their key performance indicators.
• Investment strategy and thesis to support the client in defining these two key elements. On the one hand, we helped the client define the investment criteria (startup maturity, geography, portfolio model, ticket size, etc). On the other hand, we fine-tuned the topics of interest to reach a higher level of granularity.
• Structure and governance to support the client in the architecture of the CVC fund. Topics included fund size, level of independence, legal status, governance operating model, processes, document templates, etc.
• Calendar for structuring the workflows for the launch of the CVC.

Key figures

Context 

In a context of growing pressure on the grid, the Innovation department of a major European Transmission System Operator (TSO) wanted to set its innovation priorities for the coming year.

Convinced that the work done internally lacked methodology, Aster Fab’s was asked to map all the technologies of strategic focus.

Mission

We carried out a study into four steps:

• A megatrend analysis to paint a complete picture of all megatrends impacting TSOs in the short and long term. By combining this analysis with the group’s strategy, we were able to identify all the associated challenges for our client.
• Technology analysis to scout and navigate through the technologies to address these challenges. Through this analysis, we were able to prioritize and categorize the technologies and sub-technologies.
• Technology map to present in a visual way to the board the technologies of focus. 5 clusters, 27 technologies and 140 sub-technologies were mapped.
• Prospective analysis on 10 selected sub-technologies to give our client a first flavour of potential applications, the startups operating in the space and other weak signals of interest.

Key figures

EIT Health and Biogen are joining forces to launch ‘neurotechprize’ to advance promising technology solutions addressing Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) from around the globe.

Through the neurotechprize, they aim to accelerate the most promising solutions and technologies addressing the challenge of AD in Germany.

Aster Fab is thrilled to have supported Biogen and the neurotechlab in the design and organization of the prize. 

**

4 AREAS OF FOCUS

EIT Health and Biogen have identified four areas of focus that could make a difference in the life of people diagnosed with AD:

1. Accelerating the diagnostic pathway

2. Improving disease monitoring

3. Easing burden on patients

4. Maintaining quality of life

**

THE PROGRAM

The program is aimed at health entrepreneurs in the neurotech space seeking support in the validation of their ideas and developing business goals in a supportive and enriching environment.

The program offers participants:

• A tailored three-month journey focused on your team’s objectives, established individually at the beginning of the program
• Intensive mentoring from top experts in business and science
• Access to industry stakeholders
• 10,000€ funding to support participation of founders and/or key team members in the journey

**

ADMISSION PROCESS

Shortlisted teams will be invited for an online interview directly by EIT Health staff and Biogen experts. The interviews will take place between 20-26 January 2022. Shortlisted teams will be able to book the time for the interview via link provided in the invitation.

The application score and the result of the online interview will be combined to draw up a list of teams selected to pitch live in front of the Jury.

Up to 15 shortlisted teams (Semi-Finalists) will be invited to pitch their solution in front of the Jury on February 1st, 2022 to secure their spot in the program. The Jury will select up-to 10 teams (Finalists) who will be invited to enter the program (Finalists).

**

THE PRIZE

The Jury will be able to award up-to two prizes:

• 1st Prize of 100,000€ for the winning solution
• 2nd Prize of 50,000€ for the runner-up

123Fab #61

1 topic, 2 key figures, 3 startups to draw inspiration from

According to a McKinsey report, the prediction that machines and automation would destroy more jobs than they would create has proven wrong. On the contrary, even the most advanced factories in terms of automation, the “lighthouses”, are hiring heavily. However, as many as 375 million workers may need to switch occupational categories and learn new skills. At the same time, recruiting and retaining skilled workers is becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturers. According to a study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, U.S manufacturers say it is 36% harder to find the right talent today than it was in 2018, even as the unemployment rate has nearly doubled the number of available workers. This highlights the gap between the skills manufacturers are looking for and the skills available in the labour market. As many as 2.1mn manufacturing jobs will be unfilled by 2030 and this shortage could ultimately cost the U.S. economy up to $1tr dollars.

In its traditional sense, a blue-collar worker refers to workers who perform strenuous manual labor and mindless tasks, typically in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, logistics, or maintenance. Nowadays, these activities are typically performed by machines and new-age jobs in these sectors have evolved with the advancement in technology and robotics. They now require a certain level of digital literacy to successfully manage tasks and ensure intelligent workflows. Today, the focus is on building a workforce that can operate, repair and maintain technology rather than perform physical tasks. This knowledge gap makes it difficult for both historical blue-collar workers to find jobs and for manufacturers to recruit qualified people for the job. And the desire of many Western countries to reshore some of their activities and downsize the supply chain may increase the need for these new blue-collars.

This significant shortfall of medium-skilled jobs requiring a certain level of training could be addressed by investing more in further skilling and upskilling the blue-collar workforce. Many startups are trying to tackle this problem and are offering solutions to address this worker shortage and knowledge gap. They are supporting the development of blue-collar skills through training, sometimes even putting them in touch with employers. Some focus directly on training and knowledge management tools, others more on intelligent equipment to assist them in their daily tasks. There are also platforms for planning assignments and fostering coordination according to individual skills. Recently, Indian startup Apna became a unicorn in less than two years. The startup connects blue-collar workers with each other, as well as with employers and offers training to upskill. Large groups are also turning to these startups to skill their employees and improve their recruitment process. Toyota, Casio, Shell and several others, for example,  use RapL, a micro-learning workforce training platform. Beyond technical, practical or digital knowledge, training can also include use cases on company safety procedures or on new standards like EHS (environment, health, safety) and ESG (environment, social, governance).

Beyond the benefits to the company, employee training has many advantages. According to Gartner, in 2018, 70% of employees reported not mastering the skills they need for their jobs. Structured training for blue-collar workers will not only diversify their skill sets but will also motivate them to be more productive while increasing their analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

While investment in blue-collar training seems necessary to address the worker shortages, it comes at a significant cost and does not directly guarantee productivity. Globally, the average cost per employee is $1,252, according to the Association for Talent Development’s 2016 State of the Industry Report. On the other hand, training via digital platforms or trainers does not ensure that employees will have the necessary skills to master the new technologies and truly progress.

With the shortage of blue-collar workers, training is becoming a priority, both for in-house employees and for recruiting new workers. Many large groups are teaming up with startups or external organizations to undertake these trainings. This market is now very important for blue-collars in factories, logistics and construction but it is increasingly expanding to other sectors and topics such as data, artificial intelligence or machine learning.

2 Key Figures

3,100+ startups in Corporate Learning 

More than one-third of the funding has been raised in the last years (2019-2020) according to Tracxn

$26.2 billion on internal and external training initiatives for new and existing employees

 According to The Manufacturing Institute, manufacturers spent $26.2 billion in 2020 on internal and external training initiatives for new and existing employees.

3 startups to draw inspiration from

This week, we identified three startups that we can draw inspiration from: Knowron, How.FM and Betterplace.

Knowron

The German startup created an AI-based digital assistant for industrial workers. It provides on-spot diagnosis of machine problems, automated workflows using NLP technology, and real-time information on the machine.

How.FM

The German startup How.FM is a multi-language training software built to onboard, upskill, and support the blue-collar workforce. The digital coach can cover off everything from health and safety, and compliance training, to actual work procedures such as packing processes.

Betterplace

The Indian startup helps companies with a all-in-one lifecycle platform intended to offer digital support for blue-collar workforce management.The plateform proposes to upskill every employee with a chatbot based app.

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123Fab #59

1 topic, 2 key figures, 3 startups to draw inspiration from

Over the past decades, content creation and data collection at scale have been at the center of attention: web scraping, growth hacking, cookie tracking, anything to gather information. Today, the focus is on the organizational efficiency of all this content, as the consequences of sub-optimal knowledge management techniques are becoming increasingly well known: from duplication of work to knowledge loss, to time wasted waiting for information from co-workers or giving it to others, employees spend a huge amount of time searching for data. Fortunately, startups are tackling these productivity problems, targeting companies of all sizes.

Knowledge management faces two major obstacles. The first is the multiplicity of the knowledge sources supported within the company (e.g. spreadsheets, presentations, codes, notes, videos, vocals, emails, internal chats, and more). Storing this variety of documents efficiently is complex enough, but the real challenge lies in managing legacy storage systems. Many companies have been gathering data for years, even decades, in a variety of ways. Most of the time, the information is scattered across various folders and sometimes on multiple servers. Some documents are duplicates, others are outdated and some provide no information without context or proper consistent labeling. Searching and assessing which document best fits a request can be a colossal task. However, advances in computing power and algorithm performance provide tools that startups are using to tackle this problem. ambeRoad has developed a smart search engine to be used within the company to find data. Once a query is sent to the engine, it retrieves as many documents (images, video, and audio files) as possible that treat the subject within the company’s database and sends them back, significantly reducing the time spent searching and saving documents and allowing knowledge to be shared across all entities of the company. Shelf also uses AI and machine learning to improve the efficiency of document search within companies, and provides insight into the quality of the document, to help find easily the most adapted document to the query.

Other startups such as Forethought focus on knowledge management solutions for the retail and industry sectors, especially for customer service. They provide a smart search engine for employees to reduce search time and address another critical aspect of knowledge management: finding the adequate contact for each question among the employees. To reduce resolution time and avoid rerouting the call to another agent, the algorithm pinpoints the agent with the appropriate knowledge to answer the most complex questions, ensuring that the knowledge gathered by the agents is used to its full potential. Solvvy also provides an automated chatbot that learns from agent ticket resolution as well as a guidance bot for online shopping sites. The shopping assistant finds the best-fitted item based on the answers given by the client. The answers also allow the program to gain insight and provide metrics on customer behaviors.

Another trend emerging in knowledge management is Knowledge as a Service (KaaS): information, data, and experts are available on-demand via the cloud. This service allows companies to avoid hiring external consultants or experts and drastically speeds up the problem-solving process. Startups like Lynk manage KaaS platforms to provide insights for growth strategies in companies like M&A, asset management, or branding. Their network of experts shares their experience on the platform for an hour, a day, or longer if they choose so. On the other hand startups like Techspert.io leverage AI to browse online public datasets like academic journals or commercial registries to extract experts in a field and use sentiment analysis to assess the fit between the expert and the mission. Experts are then called by the company and their profiles are sent to the client to schedule a meeting. The added value of KaaS startups lies in their capacity to attract the most skilled experts and their ability to redirect questions to the most appropriate expert of their database.

Multinational companies are also positioned on the knowledge management segment: Cisco’s Business Critical Services is an IT platform providing KaaS as well as knowledge management workflows for its users. IBM’s Watson discovery smart search engine uses AI and Natural Language Processing to search through company files and avoid data silos. Between these initiatives and those of startups, the knowledge management segment seems crowded, but with the rise of teleworking, the need for an intuitive and comprehensive way to store information and documents so that they can be easily and rapidly accessed by anyone, from anywhere, is becoming increasingly evident. At the same time, companies are experiencing a higher employee churn rate than ever before, raising the bar even further for efficiency in onboarding new talent and retaining the knowledge of departing employees.

2 Key Figures

221 knowledge management startups

registered by Traxcn since 2015

The knowledge management industry market is expected to reach $1.1 tn by 2027

The knowledge management industry market was estimated at $366.8 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2027, at a CAGR of 16.8% according to GlobeNewswire

3 startups to draw inspiration from

This week, we identified three startups that we can draw inspiration from: ambeRoad, Forethought and Lynk

ambeRoad

ambeRoad is developing an intelligent enterprise search engine to help employees to find all relevant documents easily and quickly by integrating all company internal data sources into one search engine. Our solution allows access to all company-wide files from anywhere.

Forethought

Forethought is an AI company that creates order, removes redundant work, and provides efficiency for businesses everywhere. Forethought is helping customer support organizations with a natural language understanding platform.

Lynk

Lynk’s platform unlocks the insights, experience, and expertise of experts from around the world, helping people and companies make better-informed decisions. Lynk’s Knowledge Graph uses data to understand, map, and organize experts and their knowledge, facilitating timely, intelligent connections.

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123Fab #50

1 topic, 2 key figures, 3 startups to draw inspiration from

Sustainability initiatives have grown exponentially in recent years, in public and private companies alike. This trend has been further reinforced by the pandemic, highlighting that sustainability is no longer a top-down discretionary topic, but a bottom-up business imperative. There is a real challenge to engage all stakeholders in this common goal, employees first. At the same time, stakeholders are increasingly voicing their expectations, be they clients, suppliers, regulators or employees,  pushing for greater integration of green practices across businesses. The driving forces are therefore twofold.

In response, a fairly recent model has emerged in academic research: green human resources management (GHRM). Beyond the buzzword that may be used, GHRM refers to the policies, practices and systems that are used to incorporate green objectives throughout the HRM process, namely recruitment, training, development and compensation. Human resource departments are instrumental to the fulfillment of environmental objectives, if only by creating a sustainability culture within the company that encourages the emergence of individual initiatives.

Recruitment 

While building a strong employment brand has always been essential to attract and retain high-quality talent, building a green employer reputation is even more so. And this is especially beneficial as employees serve as frontline agents for more sustainable business operations. In 2011, engineers at semiconductor chip-maker Intel devised a new chemical process that reduced chemical waste by 900,000 gallons, saving $45 million annually. Similarly, PG Tips employees reduced millimeters off a teabag, saving 9.3 tonnes of paper. As a result, a plethora of corporates (e.g. Google, Timberland, and General Electric) are reaping the benefits of positioning their organizations and recruitment processes in favor of green-minded candidates.

Onboarding, training and development

While recruiting mission-minded individuals is a great lever, instilling further awareness and values by the way of targeted training and development workshops can also contribute to the GHRM effort. Last September, BBVA announced the launch of sustainability training for its 125,000 employees worldwide. Tailored to the different departments, the training session covers climate change and the direct and indirect impacts arising from the environmental risks of BBVA’s activities. Among the various HR components, it is undeniably in the onboarding and training segment that most startups are emerging. Alongside consultancies and associations (e.g. La Fresque du Climat), startups are designing workshops to infuse best practices in their future employees. Energic, a French startup, is an example. They organize sustainability challenges for companies in order to raise awareness around sustainability issues. At Aster Fab, along with other players, we run a training course named INVEEST to help industrial and financial players master the financing levers for energy transition projects.

Performance management and compensation 

Another way to bolster employee engagement is to include sustainability objectives into performance reports. Intel was among the pioneers in this field. Environmental metrics have been part of their compensation plan since 2008. Other companies have put in place similar programmes since, such as Danone, Alcoa, Xcel Energy, etc.

Engaging employees to help a business operate sustainably is becoming all the more essential as younger generations expand their presence in workforces and push sustainability to the head of corporate agendas. If startups are flourishing in the field of carbon measurement, reduction and offsetting (see our 123Fab #42), very few are tackling the GHRM market at the moment. A French startup, CitizenWave, is one of the few to do so. With its collaborative SaaS solution, it strives to engage employees in an eco-responsible approach based on collective intelligence. Other solutions help companies encourage their employees to act at their own level: sustainable mobility credit cards (Betterway), carpooling solutions (Kinto, Karos), donation platforms (Alaya), etc.

In short, the GHRM market for startups is very immature despite the vast employee engagement market. While training to educate and raise awareness around environmental best practices is becoming commonplace in most large corporates, as well as gamification and nudging, very few initiatives revolve around the other HR components. Yet the climate emergency is such that we can predict that companies will need to equip themselves with tools to engage and track the actions of their employees to meet their own targets. The handful of startups that are positioning themselves on the topic is a weak signal of this trend.

2 Key Figures

1,775 employee engagement startups

registered by Tracxn

Global HR management market expected to reach $34.7 Bn by 2027

The global HR management market was estimated at $16 Bn in 2020 and is expected to reach $34.7 Bn by 2027, at a CAGR of 11.7%.

3 startups to draw inspiration from

This week, we identified three startups that we can draw inspiration from: Energic, CitizenWave and Alaya.

Energic

Energic is a French startup that organizes sustainability challenges for companies, schools and local communities to raise awareness.

CitizenWave

CitizenWave is a French startup that has developed a SaaS solution to engage employees to take green action. Using its mobile application and analytics platform, it is helping companies transform themselves quicker building upon collective intelligence.

Alaya

Alaya is a Swiss startup that has developed an ’employee purpose platform’ to empower companies to build a purpose-driven culture and engage employees to make an impact, one act at a time (volunteering, giving, biking to work, saving energy, etc.)