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Rediscover your inner entrepreneur

All organisations are born entrepreneurial. Success brings size, size leads to established processes – and then things slow down.

CORE Innovator helps you rediscover your entrepreneurial genes by fostering an experimental culture in your core business. From procurement to HR, and from R&D to the C-suite, you can revitalise operations and humanise growth. Our approach is co-creative at heart. Together with our customers, we help answer the difficult questions: How to get closer to customers, take better risks, and test new products and services fast.

Open Innovation Programs

In most businesses, innovation is an outside-in approach. Collaboration with new kinds of partners – especially those who have shared goals and complementary strengths – lowers the cost of innovation and accelerates the transfer of talent and technology into your business to create new value for your customers.

How it works

We find and develop ‘unlikely partnerships’ in a wider ecosystem of innovative startups and corporates, then help you solve shared innovation challenges together. We design the framework to fit your organisation and your strategy, and then equip you with the tools and capabilities for fostering a naturally innovative culture.

Agile Execution Capabilities

The ability to respond to change quickly is a 21st century competitive advantage. And it requires strong execution capabilities in your organisation. Traditional management practices have to give way to explorative, experimental, and agile ways of working for businesses to stay relevant.

How it works

We upgrade your organisation with three inseparable components: an agile mindset, an organisational structure of teams and networks, and a set of leadership practices and process tools that speed up decision-making and execution in your business. We embed a set of new capabilities at your core, making sure they stick. And we add continuous improvement and learning to make sure you stay competitive.

CORE Innovator cases

Applying design sprint to accelerate development of innovation in Novozymes

The situation:

The biotech industry is, at its core, innovative. Technology, including biotech, is in a
constant state of evolution. Disruptive technologies are growing exponentially and
competition is increasing and putting pressure on innovation.

What did we achieve:

Early customer validation of the product innovation, resulting in a collaboration agreement between Novozymes and an innovation partner.
Enabled rapid evidence-driven decision-making– in this case the projects showed such positive results that it was decided to ramp up on budget and team
Increased learning and decreased risk by validating the desirability of the innovation with customers.
Delivered two months output in one week

The challenge:

Taking biotech products from idea to market is almost always a long journey. Evidence-driven decisions are key when it comes to choosing which projects to focus on. In Novozymes’ case, customer input is essential in determining which innovations have the most potential. The company asked Core Innovator to accelerate time-to-market by testing customer desirability of a specific innovation.

Approach:

Sprint planning:
- Gathering insights
- Identifying knowledge gaps and areas of opportunity
- Securing the right customers for product testing
Five-day Design Sprint focusing on desirability
Providing evidence-based recommendations for leadership

Developing an open innovation program for Dansk Industri to drive innovation in green tech

The situation:

Denmark is a global leader in green energy with ambitious climate action targets. However, investment in green tech innovation has stagnated over the past 10 years, and green energy exports are not growing as fast as the country would like.

Compared to other industries, the energy sector has been slow at leveraging digital technology and making use of data when it comes to creating new products and services. To tackle this issue, the Confederation of Danish Industry, Danish Energy, Microsoft & Energinet came together to create a platform for green tech innovation. The mission was to make Denmark a leading player in green tech innovation, similar to the country’s global market leadership in green energy.

The challenge:

We were challenged by the Confederation of Danish Industry, Energinet, and Microsoft Denmark to develop a collaborative approach to growth acceleration in the energy industry through innovation of green tech with a focus on energy flexibility and efficiency across the value chain. The client wanted a commercial approach that would, at the same time, have an impact on climate targets and generate commercial results in the short term.

The open innovation program needed to enable:

Development of innovative and commercial green tech solutions in open partnerships across sectors.
Growth of Danish green tech startups through partnerships and access to capital.

Imagine if:

...we could leverage big data from utilities, energy production and consumption to enable efficient and flexible energy solutions for the future.
...we could connect industry with promising technologies and talents from a global ecosystem of technology-based startups.
...we could raise the bar and set bold ambitions to tackle the climate challenges while building a new generation of sustainable energy companies.

The approach:

We spent 100 days building an Open Innovation Program by designing and testing a prototype. It was co-created with the customer and with other potential members, and the process enabled the program to be ready for launch.

What we did:

Mapping of the Danish and European ecosystems of scale-ups and green energy organisations to understand gaps in the market and opportunities for collaboration.
Co-creation of an open innovation concept together with the customer and a handful of Danish corporates
Development of an open innovation program prototype including a business model, organisational structure, innovation themes, and membership structure.
Testing with potential members and onboarding of members on commercial terms.

Impact:

Developed and validated an Open Innovation Program the customer can take forward independently
DI and Danish Energy now have a strategic position and roadmap for how to accelerate innovation across sectors.
A better chance of realising the climate action targets through innovation in partnerships and fast execution of groundbreaking green tech solutions.

Testing product-market fit in early stage innovation using fake door pretotyping - the mvp before the mvp

The Situation:

The biotech industry is in a constant state of evolution, putting pressure on businesses to continuously experiment, test ideas and be the frontrunners of new and innovative solutions. But going from idea to final product can be a long journey in biotech. Therefore, the ability to decrease risk by continuously experimenting, terminating and accelerating projects based on evidence from the market is what separates the good from the great.

Experimenting for data can help companies make difficult decisions such as where to focus their innovation efforts - and time-boxed sprints with a laser sharp focus on gathering data from customers or consumers are a valuable tool for innovation. In this case, we built a “fake door” pretotype to test product-market fit with real consumers.

What Did We Achieve:

Early consumer validation of the product/solution: consumers showed interest in the product by adding it to basket in the webshop, showing buying intent and genuine interest. In this case 9.5 % of site visitors added a product to cart, which is an incredible result.
Enabling rapid decision making based on evidence: this specific experiment showed such promising results that it was decided to ramp up on budget and team for further development of the tested product.
Increased learning and decreased risk by validating consumer product-market fit very early in the product development process. This allowed the team to make decisions for the project based on evidence and not on assumptions.

In 3 days, we built a business!  In 3 days the team developed products and a web shop - they actually built a business. This required a professionally facilitated sprint process and dedicated team members.

The Challenge:

Testing product-market fit with consumers can sometimes be a challenge in B2B - especially in early-stage innovation. The final product is far from being ready and the product to be tested is probably only one part of the complete product the customers or consumers will experience.

Our client wanted real consumer indications of willingness to buy - and therefore we chose the “fake door” pretotyping method. NovoProteins asked Core Innovator to help test product-market fit with real consumers in a design sprint. We decided to go with the “fake door” pretotyping method to test consumer desirability.

Approach:

Sprint planning:
Sprint preparation by gathering all insights, finding the gaps and filling these with the needed information before the consumer desirability sprint.
Securing the right target market and target consumers to do product testing with.
Choosing the appropriate online campaigns for attracting consumers during the experiment.
Three-day Design Sprint focusing on consumer desirability. These days were spent producing the website, designing the products, the story, copy and setting up the online campaign.
Five-day testing period where the online campaign was live, attracting potential consumers to the website.
Wrapping up with recommendations for leadership, setting the team off on the right path based on the learnings from the sprint.

The Situation:

Too Good to Go, a global scale-up company on a mission to fight food waste, connects suppliers (restaurants and retail) and consumers with a digital app to create a channel for food that would otherwise be thrown away. As part of developing the brand, Too Good to Go wanted to explore new ways of using packaging (bags) to celebrate the fight against food waste and the people who share their values.

In a company with exponential growth, keeping the entrepreneurial behaviours in day-to-day business can be a challenge. For a scale-up, staying curious is as necessary as executing on a stable business model.

What Did We Achieve:

Early consumer valudation of three different types of bags.
B2B key account involvement strengthening the relationship and sharing ownership of the solution.
Increased learning and decreased risk by validating consumer response early in the innovation process. This allowed the Too Good to Go team to make decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.
In two days, we designed three business experiments based on journeys, assumptions mapping, and cheap testing techniques.

The Challenge:

The challenge was to come up with a number of ideas for a new design for the carrier bag used for the food, and to design experiments to bring evidence for the ideas that work. Too Good to Go wants to help strengthen the food waste movement altogether and to build stronger personality into the packaging. In addition, the link between the physical bag and the digital app can be stronger.

Approach:

Sprint planning:
Sprint preparation by gathering insights and understanding the key elements of the user and product journeys.
Securing the right key account partners with whom we conducted the tests.
Two-day Design Sprint focusing on the desirability and identity of the “waste warrior”.
Exploring many ideas based on a cross-functional team from Too Good to Go.
Choosing a handful and nailing critical assumptions for them to work.
Designing cheap and fast real-world experiments to prove or disprove the assumptions.

Wrapping up with recommendations for the leadership team.

Our family

Open Innovation Programs

How it works

Agile Execution Capabilities

How it works

CORE Innovator cases

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