5 THINGS ABOUT OPEN INNOVATION

JLR’s Director of New Services and Open Innovation, Igor Murakami shares why JLR’s Open Innovation programme is vital to our future and the five key things he thinks you should know about it…

1. Open Innovation is all about collaboration

The rapid pace of change enabled by new technologies, coupled with today’s geoeconomic uncertainties, makes innovation crucial for companies in today's uncertain business environment – and it is a collaborative effort.

The generation of new ideas, products, processes, and technologies that help a company stay ahead and meet the changing needs of clients should not rely on its own people. The best and disruptive ideas often come from an outside perspective and the key is creating the right ecosystem to find, develop and nurture those ideas into impactful features and services.

JLR’s Open Innovation programme helps bring pioneering solutions for our future vehicles, through collaborating with start‑ups, academia and like‑minded organisations to develop next generation processes, technologies and luxury materials.

2. Culture is everything

Embedding an innovation culture within an established corporation is one of the greatest challenges in the first years of such programme: It is the most important part.  A successful innovation strategy thrives on a mindset that is open to new ideas and creating change. 

3. Innovation is global

There are no geographical boundaries to innovation: the technologies that we're looking for are being developed around the world, in a global marketplace.

We are working with disruptive partners  outside of our business globally and to date, we have a thriving ecosystem operating in the UK, Latin America, Israel and the U.S.A. We specifically identified Latin America as a location for our first Accelerator Hub due to the region’s culture of innovation and have already launched two new mobility rental services here.

JLR’s growing network of innovation hubs all form part of our global innovation ecosystem, designed to develop and identify new ideas and co‑create disruptive technologies and accelerate delivery of our Reimagine strategy.

4. Services are a key area for JLR’s Open Innovation

Connected services are fast becoming be a key differentiator for luxury brands, and a significant strategic pillar in our Reimagine strategy. The radical digital transformation of our business is central to our ambition to offer new modern luxury experiences and state of the art connectivity to our clients.

Our business collects real world vehicle data every day, from every conceivable driving condition. Rather than spending millions and taking years to develop new IT systems, we can quickly develop new insights, and innovative new services working with start‑ups.

5. It’s not all about unicorns

Open Innovation is not all about finding the next unicorn (a start‑up that reaches the value of over $1 billion), or revolutionary concept.  

Many business‑critical functions can benefit from a culture of open innovation and that is why we have created more than 90 global Innovation Champions internally across our organisation. 

Already, we are seeing results. As well as engineering and product‑led activity, innovations are being developed in our fundamental business operations such as Commercial, HR, and Finance. 

JLR’s global Open Innovation programme is creating a thriving ecosystem of leading innovation hubs for mobility and sustainability with a focus on seven priorities; electrification, connectivity, digital services, intelligent multi‑enterprise, talent, sustainability and metaverse.

The programme launched in April 2022 and has innovation hubs already operating in Latin America, UK, Israel and USA with more to be announced throughout 2023.

Since the launch of Open Innovation, In Motion Ventures, JLR’s Corporate Venture Capital arm, has invested in start‑up and scale‑up companies, many of which are focused on providing more sustainable products and services. Our investment portfolio includes: Gen Phoenix, Envisics, Circulor, Carmoola, Bumper, Ascend Elements and Zeelo. 

To find our more please visit InMotion Ventures.