Why would a large corporation entrust its innovation projects to an outside company?

“Large, complex companies like ours—which now employs more than 140,000 people worldwide—have no choice but to embraceopen innovation.” Sylvain Paineau, Business Incubation Director at Schneider Electric, shares his experience of working with an external firm, Dynergie, to support innovation and ensure the success of the group’s growth strategy through innovation.

Over the course of seven years of collaboration, Dynergie has tailored its innovation consulting services to its client’s needs, starting with the development and management of collaborative projects to secure funding and continuing through to the market launch of the supported innovations.

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Find out what we’ve actually accomplished with Schneider Electric.

From steel in the 19th century, to electrical distribution and automation in the 20th, to energy management today, Schneider Electric has always been a driving force behind the transformations in its industry, with an international, innovative, and responsible mindset. Now focused on energy and industrial process management and the optimization of their use, the company offers integrated technologies and solutions that optimize energy use. It is a global leader in energy management and energy efficiency.

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Since 2012, Schneider Electric has relied on Dynergie’s services tosupport its innovation strategy, specifically:

• seeking funding opportunities, in part for collaborative projects,
• promoting its innovative projects,
• market interest rate sourcing.

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We therefore invited Sylvain Paineau, Business Incubation Director at Schneider Electric, to our offices so he could share his insights on the partnership with Dynergie, which has been in place for over seven years in the field of innovation.

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Large, complex companies like ours—which now employs more than 140,000 people worldwide—are compelled to adopt open innovation.

"Large, massive companies like ours, which now has more than 140,000 employees worldwide, are compelled to embrace open innovation. – Sylvain Paineau –"

The advantage for a large corporation of outsourcing certain project tasks to an external firm is that it allows the company to partner with agile specialists who bring a wide range of complementary expertise.

Testimonial from Sylvain Paineau, Business Incubation Director at Schneider Electric.

Expertise in financing collaborative projects

When this partnership began in 2012, Dynergie supported Schneider Electric in its collaborative projects related to securing funding and managing projects once funding had been secured.

As the lead partner in the PLESMO project—which gave rise to the Grenoble-based startup Gulplug —Schneider Electric chose to engage Dynergie asan expert in setting up and managing collaborative projects.

Project management—whether in terms of tracking deliverables, scheduling, organizing meetings, preparing reports and business plans, or ensuring compliance with InnoEnergy’s specific procedures—was a success, enabling Schneider Electric, for example, to secure nearly €450,000 in grants in 2015.

Dynergie's management and oversight of the PLESMO project helped secure nearly €450,000

Market expertise, tailored to meet the client’s needs

Schneider Electric, which began as a manufacturer of products and has evolved into a provider of hardware and software services, is constantly adapting its strategy. Thanks to their flexibility, our specialists added value to the management of this transition by stepping outside the scope of their assignments when necessary and adapting to the project’s changing needs. At the same time, Dynergie has evolved and expanded itsinnovation support services with a team dedicated to market analysis, enabling the company to assess the viability of the innovations being developed and identify the priority markets to target in order to turn them into commercial successes.

Let’s take the example of the LEDbox project, a device capable of simultaneously controlling around thirty LEDs. Using its innovation pyramid, Dynergie identified the obstacles to the project in order to find appropriate solutions and overcome them. Schneider Electric then entrusted Dynergie with the task of engaging with the market, testing the impact of the value proposition represented by this innovation, and then targeting the most promising potential customers.

The benefits of a long-term relationship

Over the course of seven years of collaboration, the consulting teams have provided innovation consulting for numerous projects at Schneider Electric, have seen them come to fruition, and continue to support several of them today.

Schneider Electric values their services, particularly their ability to tailor their offerings to meet their clients’ evolving needs, as well as the expertise and experience in innovation they bring, which enables them to effectively address the specific challenges of various industries.

However, other strengths led Schneider Electric to place its trust in Dynergie. Its teams have developed a highly reliable approach based on essential soft skills. In particular, their meticulousness and communication skills have enabled them to collaborate with numerous contacts at Schneider Electric while keeping projects focused on their key objectives.

A long-term relationship also allows us to collaborate on innovation projects from their inception through various stages of iteration — and sometimes over several years —all the way to market launch.

In conclusion

It is important for us to be able to adapt our services to keep pace with innovation and to remain agile, so that we can meet the long-term needs of our global clients.

This is what we do with Schneider Electric, which continues to rely on our specialized and complementary services to drive its growth through innovation.

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