Open mind, change as a business model (and lifestyle)

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The day before yesterday in Rome the Innovation day of the Division of Enel’s Renewable division was held. A meeting to learn to welcome technologies and innovative business models in a rapidly expanding sector

Much more than a simple overview of the world of innovation. The Innovation Days at Enel are events that our company is promoting to "push" the ideas inside the company, open people’s mind and change their approach to work, making innovation a day-to-day lifestyle.

The Innovation Day that was held on October 18 at the Enel Auditorium in Rome involved the Renewables division of the group. The slogan of the day was "Open mind - let's innovate the world", that is, open the minds to innovate the world. An opportunity to take note of what has been done so far to anticipate the energy industry revolution with increasingly advanced and "disruptive", more digital, smarter solutions.




A transformation that sees renewables drive change and the Renewable Business Line of our group among the world leaders of this metamorphosis. However, in order to maintain leadership, noted Ernesto Ciorra, Head of Innovation and Sustainability at Enel, it is necessary that people should always be ready to consider innovative solutions and look at things differently.

To facilitate them in this daily exercise, in our group the Innovation department was created, whose task is precisely to stimulate the attention on what is happening inside and outside the company. "Innovation - said Ciorra addressing the people present in the auditorium and those in connection from the different Countries in which we operate – does not constitute our function or our top management, but is the result of the interweaving between different cultural backgrounds, ideas which together we carry out and that produce value for the company and for the customers. And this cannot happen without the people".

"Innovation means many things," said Francesco Venturini, Head of Global Renewable Generation, who focused on the Open Power and Open Innovation concepts, synthesis of the new group strategy. "The great revolution made by Enel over the past two years has been to move from a closed to an open approach to innovation. This means that we must not think that we will innovate and change the world alone, but to do that we need external aid. Research and development cannot be achieved within us, we have to go out looking for good ideas, to bring them within us". Not only that. You innovate if you have the ability to change its business model. "Open Innovation - added Venturini - is not just about developing new technologies, but using them differently. And that's what we want to do with our Open Power vision, create new business model to continue on the successful path taken by Enel over the past 60 years". A model of development and continuous growth that is based on "the ability to change ourselves, every day."


Riccardo Amoroso, Head of Innovation and Sustainability  of the Renewables Division,  explained how you change the approach to innovation, with the goal of looking for ideas in line with the green energy business, with the value chain and of the Country. A system that uses three different platforms used to look for innovation opportunities in clean tech both inside and outside the company. A structured system, said Amoroso, which gathers every year more than 500 innovative proposals from technology and business models and for which 56 projects have already been initiated in different Country, involving all business lines and departments of the company.

In the spirit of openness, the day was marked by a series of guest speakers, starting from Carlo Tusi, general manager of Uber Italy. In addition to telling the route taken in 2009 of the now famous App for urban mobility, Tusi explained how the success of Uber is due not only to the ability to change technology and its business model in a very short time, but also anticipating and sensing how it moves and where it is going innovation. On stage, the contribution of utility managers and partnerships operatig in renewable energy and in storage (Jillis Raadschelders EASE, John Jung Greensmith and Christoph Ostermann Sonnen), and the world of research with the head of the Italian Institute of Technology Transfer technology (ITT) and the designers of the Onda Solare project, supported by Enel.


The Innovation Day ended with the award ceremony of  the EGP Innovation Competition 2015, the first edition of an external contest to find innovative solutions to five problems related to the Clean Tech.