25 January 2017
Madrid Headquarters
The director of Strategy and Innovation at the Sacyr Group, Diego Rocha, was the protagonist at the January session of the Entrepreneurship Club at the Deusto Business School – an initiative which, taking the form of a working breakfast with around 25 participants, enables executives from large companies to transfer their corporation’s experience into open innovation within an environment of confidentiality.
The person in charge of implementing the Sacyr Group strategic plan and of setting in motion its innovation model, highlighted the importance of innovation during his presentation in order to improve long-term competitiveness, and especially during mature cycles. Rocha ended up stating that the real risk that can be faced today by a company is of not innovating: “there’s no other option – either innovate or innovate”. And he acknowledged that, despite this, it is not easy to innovate, “as the relationship between the day-to-day running of companies and innovation is a complex one”.
Diego Rocha defined Sacyr as a highly innovative company. “Innovation forms part of our own principles and would appear to be clearly defined in our vision, mission and values”. He went on to explain the main areas of innovative interest to the company: energy efficiency, increased reality, mobile apps and 3D printing, online stuff and big data, robotics and drones, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology.
Scyr has set in motion a series of actions to develop each of these areas, among which special mention should be made of open innovation via collaboration – both on the part of its own employees and startups and other corporations, etc.
With a view to invigorating innovation, the company maintains a series of initiatives ranging from the organisation of iFridays – monthly meetings to which a speaker is invited to share their experiences – to maintenance of a blog about innovation on the company’s intranet, the gathering together of employees’ initiatives and the awarding of prizes that recognise the best ideas in this field, which is now in its seventh year. The result of this is the contact and collaboration with many startups that has led to specific projects in different spheres of activity, such as: the development of a mobile app to monitor progress made in building work; new technology for sanitary waste treatment; the application of nanotechnology to clean buildings; the use of a mobile app for dependency services, the development of technology for waste evaporation; the use of an app and a technological platform for the citizen-town hall-road cleaning services supplier, among others.
The Sacyr executive ended his presentation by assuring those present that, in a world he defined as being increasingly complex and interesting, innovation is the key to contributing value to all stakeholders (customers, employees and shareholders). He also took advantage to reiterate to those in attendance the offer of collaboration in his open innovation model with all types of agent (large corporations, startups, universities and research centres, etc.).
The main companies that work in corporate entrepreneurship and open innovation pass on a monthly basis through the Corporate Entrepreneurship at the Deusto Business School. This is a stable forum for discussing and learning about the best international practices in the field of open innovation, and the purpose of this activity is to create a favourable environment for better change management in large companies with the aid of entrepreneurs and innovators.
Companies such as BBVA, Telefónica and IBM, among others, have attended sessions of the Corporate Entrepreneurship Club at the Deusto Business School.
