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Mastering and adopting new technologies - key enablers
2022-12-23
CampX by Volvo Group opened in 2019 to accelerate technology and business innovation through partnerships. The most important skill enhanced since then is how to master and adopt new technologies. What are the key success factors?
In the passenger car industry, the top selling companies are new and didn’t exist a few years ago. Read more on this link. One of the key enablers for speed and keeping ahead of competition is that they are very good at mastering and adopting new technologies. The passenger car industry differs a lot from the commercial vehicles, but the importance of mastering and adopting the new technologies are the same.
“Three factors stand out as important for both effectiveness & efficiency in the transformation journey with new technologies: Individual growth, Organizational support, and Process & structure. The latter is where the CampX concept can support with just the right amount of structure to secure that many effective technology and business validation projects can be run.” says Christian Johansson, CampX Head of Concept and Operations.
Accelerate technology and business development – the CampX toolbox
The CampX Concept has a lean process where purchasing, legal, IP and the CampX team, support the Volvo Group teams to explore, validate, and adopt new technologies with external startups. This is done through the three tools in the CampX Concept; the Incubator, the Accelerator, and the Venture Builder.
“The CampX toolbox is a complement to the traditional R&D process and is open for everyone within the Volvo Group to use”, ads Christian.
Let’s go through the three tools a bit more in detail.
The Incubator – The best startups within our prioritized domains (automation and electromobility) are invited to be co-located to be near our engineers. This allows the teams at Volvo to explore promising future technologies in an inspiring and risk-free environment. Volvo on their side will support with industry insights and mentoring. Read more here.
The Accelerator – This includes demand driven co-creation with external partners. The focus is to harness the startup ecosystem towards the gaps and challenges we have in our roadmaps. The Accelerator will support with formalizing the challenge, finding the best fit startup, setting-up the legal agreement, IP assessment, sourcing etc. It will also frontload finding and validating technology solutions to enable an effective market launch.
25+ projects are ongoing today, here are three examples of startup projects. Read more here
Detect influence of drugs through image analysis.
Design and manufacture retrofit kit to transform Diesel to BEV
Improved battery thermal management with fluid in direct contact with cells
The Venture builder – The focus is to test & validate new business opportunities with speed, lower risk & costs, starting with an internal business idea or IP opportunity. In close collaboration with the business owner, the Venture Builder supports with creating a business plan, validating the customer need and willingness to pay, developing go to market and finally launch of the new business internally or externally.
Cetasol and Fyrqom are successful examples from the Venture Builder. Read more here.
Related links:
CampX by Volvo Group web page
Volvo Group spins out new company Fyrqom AB
Volvo Penta and Qamcom Group form the new start up: Cetasol
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