Corporate Innovation in Industry 4.0
From Closed to Open
This exclusive event on April 10, 2025, at NLND Berlin, in collaboration with Philip Morris International and Plug and Play, highlighted the crucial role of open innovation for the future of industrial manufacturing.
What is Open Innovation?
Conventional innovation within large corporate businesses or manufacturing and industrial incumbents takes a more protective approach. Trying to maintain a strategic advantage by keeping your innovation challenges and their potential solutions secret - protected by tight contracting and intellectual property agreements.
Open Innovation proposes an alternative to the more traditional corporate innovation models, by creating collaboration frameworks where business share their challenges publicly, with the idea that competitors, or those in other industries, might be experiencing the same challenges. By doing this, businesses are collectively identifying a market for startups to actively address with their technologies and products.
Why is this relevant for industrial business?
Specifically in Germany, the rate of digitalisation in the industrial and manufacturing sectors has slowed over the last decades.
Why? A conservative mindset and weak reward for entrepreneurial thinking has eroded the nation's reputation as an international manufacturing and production powerhouse, in favour of other more innovation-centric nations.
The impacts of this are broad: a lack of digital sovereignty, a less digitally literate workforce, lack of competitiveness on the global market, and the subsequent economic impacts.
And the business benefits are huge too - it just takes a leap of faith and a brave mindset shift. Product innovation is one angle, but process innovation in the manufacturing and production of goods has obvious cost saving and revenue maximising benefits.
How to practice open innovation?
Innovation consultants and ecosystem builders like Plug and Play and GCD Berlin are two organisations creating programs, platforms and spaces to facilitate open innovation.
NLND Berlin's Venture-Client Services employ the thinking behind open innovation, to create a tailored program for each corporate partner to unlock their innovation challenges.
The Event
Services:
Event management + logistics
Technical services: A/V, stage management
Location Management
Catering, F+B across location
Hosting + Guest Management
Guests: 200
Client: Philip Morris International
Partners: Plug and Play
