Robert Bosch GmbH (Bosch) has established itself as a global leader in innovation and continuous improvement. For more than 12 years, Bosch executives have partnered with startups, universities and other outside partners to evolve and drive the company’s innovation culture. More recently, Bosch demonstrated its increasing commitment to continuous reinvention with the creation of a corporate-level division, fully dedicated to Business Model Innovation. The company’s considerable success with these efforts is evident in its ongoing delivery of innovative, market-changing new products, services, and business models, and in the increasing engagement of Bosch employees, who are embracing innovation and structured risk-taking across all divisions in increasing numbers. This cross-divisional, multi-level commitment to structured innovation processes is accelerating market-validated, team-driven innovations.
Beginning in late 2016, IAG partnered with Bosch to develop the next generation of the company’s structured and scalable internal innovation processes. Our shared objective was to begin by delivering a 2-phase Internal Corporate Innovation Program over the course of a year while training Bosch internal employees to become qualified instructors, capable of repeating and scaling the delivery of our curriculum across more Bosch divisions. In our initial program, over 100 Bosch employees across seven countries, ranging from China to Hungary, have worked to validate or invalidate 24 new internally-generated business ideas. By the end of the first program, Bosch will not only have launched new market-validated product, service and business model innovations but will also have qualified internal instructors to facilitate repeating the process into the future.
Here is a short video describing the goals and benefits of Bosch’s Internal Corporate Innovation program.
