Climbing a mountain is no picnic. If you want to make it to the top, you want to make sure that you do it with people you can trust in challenging situations. Similarly, to partake in an innovation expedition, one must begin by assembling a tightly knitted team with diverse competences.
“To turn ideas into reality is to turn technology into business,” says Amy Chen, KONE’s chief innovation officer, “So you need people who are experts in technology, and people with great business sensibility, working closely together as one team.”
“At KONE, the direction of our innovation work is guided by our strategy, but the scope evolves as we learn more about the concept”, says Pekka Perunka, head of innovation execution at KONE.
Putting customers front and center
Mountain climbers may be motivated by a simple willingness to go on an adventure. Innovators, however, are trying to solve actual problems. The needs of the customers and the users are always the priority, and that principle guides the entire process.
“Any innovation should start from the customer pain point,” says Fabien Fedy, head of new business innovation at KONE.
The reason is very simple: in a business setup an innovation is only successful when the customers are willing to buy it. “We constantly validate what we are developing with our customers throughout the innovation process. It’s like checking the weather conditions during an expedition,” says Fedy.
“Involving customers in the innovation process is not always easy, but it is rewarding and something I’m personally very excited about,” adds Etti Seppä, KONE’s head of innovation for the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa area. “I believe that sharing our innovations with customers at an early stage helps us ensure that we are on the right track with the idea.”
One example of this is the use of elevator data to optimize a building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, which KONE has piloted at the Ülemiste City business campus in Tallinn.
“The starting point was a bigger question: instead of only optimizing our equipment, how could we use the data it generates to improve the energy efficiency of an entire building?” says Perunka.
“We tested the solution on-site. Through rapid iterations and close collaboration with the customer, we refined the concept into a scalable solution that delivers measurable energy savings.”
Finding the path to turn ideas into reality
Some people may dream of climbing a mountain all their life, yet never actually realize their dreams. Similarly, a typical pitfall of corporate innovation is the “theater effect”, where corporations celebrate ideas but struggle with execution.
Pekka Perunka points out the main principles of execution. Several ideas are tested, and the ones with the greatest strategic impact and potential are then developed further.
“The sooner we get a working solution into real users' hands, the faster we learn, if we're building something people actually want. This is exactly what we did when developing our AI-powered tool, the Technician Assistant.”
Not every mountain expedition reaches the summit, and not every innovation journey leads to new solutions to the market. Finding the right path may require several efforts and dead ends. Therefore, it is important to keep a portfolio of innovations, so that some of them will be successful.
“I have worked with dozens of projects at KONE since I joined the company in 2015, and about one tenth of them went to market,” points out Janne Öfversten, head of digital and sustainability innovations at KONE.
“Our innovation method is ‘field-tested’: it originates from our practical learnings rather than from textbooks,” says Perunka.
“The culture of courage and risk-taking is quite central to it. We think big and challenge ways of doing things. Only that way we can come up with fundamental innovations that shape the future of cities.”
There’s always the next journey
When a mountain expedition finally reaches the summit, they will likely have feelings of pride, exhilaration, and fulfillment. We did it!
But if they are an ambitious team, they will probably soon turn their gaze over to the horizon. There are still more mountains to conquer, more shared adventures to experience.
Similarly, the KONE innovation team are always hungry for new projects.
“We love challenges, especially when we are having fun working with a like-minded yet very diverse team,” Amy Chen sums up.