Open Innovation Challenge

The Open Innovation Challenge (OIC) is an annual competition for start-ups organised by Elia Group. Successful applicants receive funding from Elia Group while the company can leverage ideas that help them improve the operation of their teams and change the internal culture of the company, making it more agile and innovative.

 

Highlights

• The OIC creates a new ecosystem of partners and a collaborative atmosphere towards internal and external cooperation within Elia Group’s teams
• It’s a collaborative approach to identifying practices that are applied in other sectors and could be transferred to a TSO
• The competition was first held in 2017 and previous winners are a 3D-visualisation system that can be used at both the planning and the permit application stages (2017) and a solution that can be used to better estimate power generation from solar panels (2018)

 

About the practice

Elia Group has created the Open Innovation Challenge to attract talent and innovative ideas that can be integrated into the company’s business activities relatively quickly. A designated jury chooses the 20 best start-ups from among the pool of applicants. These organisations are then assigned a mentor from Elia Group who guides them via the next steps of the programme and helps them refine their proposed solutions before pitching them to the jury in the final round. The most successful pitchers win € 20,000 as well as the chance to implement their technology within Elia Group’s challenging environment as a supervised pilot project to achieve a so-called Proof of Concept. If the solution is successfully tested, Elia Group starts implementing it in relevant areas.

After the 2017 competition, Elia Group involved researchers to further develop the winning tool, a 3D-visualisation system that can be used at both the planning and the permit application stages. This shows that the OIC does not only create a network of creative entrepreneurs but also prompts collaboration with researchers and universities.

In 2019, nearly 100 start-ups from all over the world applied for the competition, which this year has a special focus on improving the day-to-day activities of the work force dealing with asset management and maintenance. The final pitching session in front of senior executives will happen in Berlin in June 2019. This session took place in Brussels for the first two OIC editions in 2017 and 2018.

 

Find out more

Elia Group encompasses two major transmission system operators (TSOs) in two European regions: Elia Transmission in Belgium and 50Hertz Transmission, one of the four German TSOs, in north-eastern Germany.

Even before creating the OIC, Elia started implementing projects that apply machine learning, blockchain technologies and artificial intelligence, such as using drones for inspections.