The Open Innovation team at Electrolux has chosen seven partners to help develop cutting-edge solutions to save water and energy, make packaging circular, and take care of the health of consumers and employees.
The new partners join the company’s Booster Program, the open innovation vehicle for quick validation and testing of new solutions in which Electrolux connects with smaller, creative companies to tackle internal challenges. While Electrolux gains access to the best thinkers in the markets, our partners have the opportunity to work alongside a global company with engineering, R&D and manufacturing power.
The companies selected at the Innovation Day on May 20 to drive forward their innovations are:
Augmented quality control:
Drishti provides AI-powered continuous improvement solutions for manual assembly lines
Functional barriers:
Aimplas provides solutions to prevent contaminant migration, with expertise in plastics and polymers
Energy harvesting:
Enervibe and E-peas make devices that convert vibrations to electricity
Circular Packaging:
Returnity revolutionizes how goods are moved between customers, stores and warehouses using return logistics systems
Home hygiene:
LEDtailor makes devices using blue LED light to preserve hygiene in a non-chemical way in various environments
Digital ergonomic evaluation:
Cerebrumedge develops AI-based systems for quick, real-time ergonomics assessments for workers performing repetitive tasks
Low-water washing:
Moleaer has a solution to treat, preserve and improve water quality in appliances
The power of transparency and partnership and co-innovation is clearly illustrated here,” said Martin Hedström, Head of Insights & Innovation, after partners presented on Innovation Day. “We could never come up with these breakthrough solutions in-house in such a short time, whereas we provide an enormous platform for scaling all of these innovations. The power is in the combined effort.”
Electrolux and the partner companies will work together for the next 12 months with the overall goal being to turn initial solutions into workable products, technologies and processes that address the specific challenges related to Electrolux company strategy.
The Innovation Day was preceded by an impressive Call for Innovation earlier this year: The number of submissions rose 25 percent over the previous call, and six countries from around the globe are represented among the partners. Since the program started in 2018, eight projects have been developed to MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage and two projects are in scale-up.
For more information on the open innovation program, visit here: Booster Program: Home (electrolux.com)
