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In Article, Global, Press Release, Venture Studio, Fund, Foundries

SAP Among the World’s Top 25 Startup-Friendly Companies and Winner of Corporate Startup Accelerator Award

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced it has been recognized with a Corporate Startup Stars Award as one of the Top 25 most active companies to encourage open innovation with startups.

SAP also received a Corporate Startup Accelerator Award for its acceleration efforts and identifying worldwide best practices in corporate-startup collaboration. The announcement was made at the digital award ceremony hosted by open innovation advisory firm Mind the Bridge and the International Chamber of Commerce, on December 15.

Engaging with early stage startups is an important aspect of SAP’s holistic open innovation approach to remain agile and resilient in today’s global marketplace. This includes dedicated programs within SAP’s early stage venture arm SAP.iO to scout and accelerate new ideas and talent inside and outside of the company.

“At SAP, we know that we can mutually benefit from outside-in perspectives to inspire innovation and drive business impact for our customers,” said Juergen Mueller, chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. “Since 2017, we have helped scale more than 270 promising startups across all lines of business and industries in nine locations across the globe. Providing them with the access and resources they need to build on SAP solutions complements our portfolio and internal innovation efforts, which enables our customers to gain even more value from their SAP investments.”

For the fifth year, startups have been asked to nominate the companies that are most active and friendly in working with small businesses. Started in 2016 under the European Commission’s Startup Europe Partnership initiative, the Corporate Startup Stars Awards have been scaled to include corporations and startups worldwide through the partnership between Mind the Bridge and the International Chamber of Commerce.

“SAP has consistently proven to be one of the most startup-friendly corporations worldwide by engaging with startups in multiple modes, ranging from acceleration and partnerships to investments and acquisitions,” said Alberto Onetti, chairman, Mind the Bridge. “We appreciate the approach SAP.iO has taken and its recent evolution. The combination of startup and employee-driven innovation and the renewed focus on scaling companies makes SAP.iO a benchmark globally for rethinking and optimizing the corporate accelerator model.”

To learn more about how SAP is helping innovators inside and outside of SAP build products, find customers and change industries, please visit SAP.iO.

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @SAPNews.

Media Contact:
Lesa Beber, +1 (650) 390-1629, lesa.beber@sap.com, ET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

In Foundries, Press Release, Portfolio News

Paradox Takes Home Gold and Silver in Brandon Hall Group’s 2020 Excellence in Technology Awards

Paradox, the leading Assistive Intelligence platform for talent experience, announced today that it was recognized with two Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology awards, including the Gold award for Best Advance in AI for Business Impact — a new award introduced for 2020 in the Future of Work category. Paradox also won Silver in Best Advancement in Talent Acquisition Technology for the second consecutive year.

“With the help of our clients, Paradox has been fortunate to create new opportunities and accelerate innovative solutions to allow these organizations to stay agile during some of the most challenging times most of us have ever experienced,” said Aaron Matos, Paradox’s founder and CEO. “It’s always been our mission to make best-in-class products that solve real problems for our clients, and we’re grateful to have been able to deliver on those promises and help them adapt to 2020’s many obstacles.”

Brandon Hall Group is a globally renowned research and analyst firm with more than 10,000 clients and 25 years experience delivering research-based solutions. The Excellence Awards recognize the best organizations that have successfully deployed programs, strategies, processes, systems, and tools that have achieved measurable results. The program attracts entrants from leading companies around the world, as well as mid-market and smaller firms.

Read More…

In Foundries, Press

Exploring AI in Logistics and Last Mile Delivery, Innovation in Customer Experience, and A Rebel’s Story of Normalizing Hijabi for Women in Stem w/ Layla Shaikley of Wise Systems

This is a story that is unique and one that needs to be evangelized. Layla Shaikley, co-founder of a tech start-up that has seen explosive growth in logistics tech and AI-driven optimization within last mile stumbled into supply chain. She actually has a background in architecture and design. As an Iraqi woman, she wanted to make mobility safe during the most recent Iraqi war. It was during an elective class in the media lab at MIT (while she was getting her 2nd masters degree) that a seemingly small class project – “how to change 1 billion lives with technology” – would change the course of her life forever.

Besides from being absolutely brilliant and an advocate for women in STEM, Layla is passionate about normalizing Hijabi in our domain and helping college graduates and millennials land the job of their dreams. She has a massive TikTok and Instagram following with millions of views (username @laylool). Layla believes that drivers have a really HARD job and so many focus on the last mile, but what about the last 100 feet?

Layla believes that the future of work is still human and the driver’s experience IS the customer experience in many ways. In Episode 48, you’ll learn about Layla’s passion in customer service and solving wicked problems in logistics, problems that are relevant when we imagine the future of work, autonomous supply chains, drones, and autonomous delivery. She shares outcomes from customer stories of dramatic effects realized in CO2 reduction when using Wise Systems’ AI-enabled optimization.

The expectation for enterprise applications is that they are as seamless like in the consumer world. Layla unpacks Dominos and Zappos examples where customer loyalty comes from good customer experience. She also describes diversity as a business imperative and insights as an SAP.iO foundry superstar (shout out to John Licata)! We have a huge industry with rapidly evolving needs. Where do you stand on innovation and embracing diversity for better product design and customer outcomes.

Listen Here…

In Foundries, Article

Moments of Opportunity and Innovation in the Consumer Products Industry

With the support of the latest startup innovations, consumer products companies are thriving and exceeding consumer expectations in moments of opportunity, now detailed in a new report by SAP.

The consumer products industry has had to move quickly to respond to the various implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. The digital transformation of all industries has been accelerated due to challenges such as radical demand shifts, supply chain reconfiguration, seasonal workforce interruptions, and the repurposing of manufacturing capacity.

The cascade of new trends from within the consumer products industry, coupled with the need to rethink consumer engagement, strengthens the need for consumer products companies to cultivate innovation coming from startups and new technologies.

New Wave in Consumer Products

Five key trends are fueling a new wave of innovation in the consumer products industry.

  1. There has been an increase in venture capital funding for consumer products companies, where disruptive companies are entering the market at a rapid pace, leading established players to question old operating models.
  2. More and more consumers – specifically Millennials and Generation Z – are emphasizing the importance of reducing the environmental impact of their consumption habits and are willing to pay more for organic and all-natural products.
  3. There has been a shift in which types of companies are dominating the market. Whereas previous industry leaders were companies with the most resources and highest manufacturing capacity, today the companies with the most innovative ideas and talent are entering and leading the market at an unprecedented pace.
  4. There has been a sharp decline in the cost of resources in various categories, eliminating the cost-based barriers to market entry and allowing companies to scale like never before.
  5. Consumer products companies no longer think in terms of “moments of truth,” where there is a linear path to purchase with well-defined touch points to influence a purchase. Rather, in order to succeed, consumer products companies need to meet consumers in moments of opportunity, in which they can orchestrate an ecosystem to deliver personalized and unique experiences in service of achieving an outcome.

Read More…

In Article, Portfolio News, Consumer Industries, Foundries

Video-Powered Virtual Storefronts Fuel Next E-Commerce Boom

According to Gartner researchers, live commerce is one of the hottest digital selling trends as retailers and even business-to-business (B2B) companies engage customers with personalized sales through streaming video.

To be clear, these are not yesterday’s social brand ambassadors. TVPage has pioneered this latest trend, offering an artificial intelligence (AI)-based cloud platform that brings together store associates, approved influencers, and products for the most dynamic online e-commerce machine to date.

“We are at the forefront of social e-commerce, using video to put virtual yet personalized salespeople directly in the online store,” said Allon Caidar, co-founder and CEO at TVPage. “It’s a full-cycle marketing engine for customer engagement and online shopping, turning companies into their own social media destination that pops up as people search for products.”

Bustling Virtual Storefronts

Large retailers and other companies worldwide are using TVPage to replicate the kind of expert selling consumers crave. For example, when a retailer signs up, it gains a virtual storefront for its own sales associates – as well as independent influencers – all of whom serve as social brand ambassadors. Using a mobile app or web browser, these ambassadors keep consumers engaged by uploading videos, photos, and other information about products on the retailer’s website. They use social media to share their content, answer customer questions, and invite interested consumers to special online events.

“Consumers can chat with social brand ambassadors anytime to find out if a product comes in a different color or size,” Caidar said. “Ambassadors might decide to schedule beauty makeovers based on the questions they’ve received or spotlight gaming releases that reflect breaking trends. Customers can purchase products directly from their videos.”

Companies can set and monitor social ambassador metrics from one dashboard, paying their own employees based on individual performance goals. TVPage also helps its customers find and manage independent influencers, including sourcing and paying freelance social ambassadors.

Read More…

In Foundries, Blog, New York

The Circularity Gap: 630 billion reasons the U.S. should implement a circular economy

For 200+ years, our planet has accepted a linear economic model, where we harvest and extract materials, use them to manufacture some sort of product, and then either our employees or consumers elect to get rid of these items.

It’s easy to understand why this happens. We live in an age of constant innovation within our daily lives. Updates come out daily, apps are launched every week, and new products and technologies are being introduced at an alarming pace. These changes have created a culture in which valuable and accessible assets are often underutilized and consistently replaced with a modified newer version. This leads to the extensive storage of gently used items and assets, or, even worse, their direct disposal to a landfill, resulting in a massive environmental impact. In fact, of all the materials harvested from the Earth every year, we cycle back just 8.6%. Just two years ago, this was a shade over 9%.

According to Forbes, the United States could realize up to $630 billion in savings per year by implementing a circular economy if we could recover these resources.

$630 billion. In savings. Per year.

The Circularity Gap Shift

“The circular economy is based on three principles: designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use at the highest possible value, and regenerating natural systems.”

– Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Circular Procurement

To rise up and overcome the dangers and challenges of climate change and its ripple effect on communities, businesses need to shift their procurement decisions so that the material outputs of unwanted or idle resources become the inputs in new or repurposed products – by implementing the Circular Economy.

This shift to the circular economy is more than environmental impact. It’s about eliminating waste, but also it’s about maximizing the life-span of materials through innovation and creating the conditions necessary to foster innovation, creativity, and – ultimately – address societal needs.

It’s about creating a sustainable economic model that’s better for the globe and all of its inhabitants.

If we realize what is possible with $630 billion in savings per year, the redistribution of those savings can be directed to the people and places that need it the most. They can be used to incentivize organizations to continuously work to create a better home for our future generations.

And if the best results of our current linear economic model are: hemorrhaging savings each year, negatively impacting our climate, and pushing equitable practices out of reach, perhaps instead of asking ourselves, “Is shifting our procurement model worth it?”, we need to ask ourselves: “Can we afford not to modernize and evolve procurement and shift to a circular model?”

Read More…

In Foundries, Portfolio News, Consumer Industries

E-commerce Made Human Through Virtual Shopping and Brand Experience Innovation w/ Natasha Franzen of HERO

Experts predict that retail ecommerce sales will reach $4.13 trillion in 2020 and it is expected that mobile commerce will take a market share of e-commerce of 72.9% by 2021. As we enter the holiday season navigating COVID, retailers face unprecedented opportunities to reimagine brand experiences and bridge the storefront’s physical to digital continuum. While adapting an agile supply chain, increasing conversion rates, reducing wastes, including decreasing returns are front of mind, 1 company is transforming virtual shopping, where the online shopping experience is made human, again.

Meet HERO

In Foundries, Tel Aviv, Portfolio News

Video-Powered Virtual Storefronts Fuel The Next E-Commerce Boom

According to Gartner researchers, live commerce is one of the hottest digital selling trends as retailers and even B2B companies engage customers with personalized sales through streaming video. To be clear, these are not yesterday’s social brand ambassadors. TVPage has pioneered this latest trend, offering an AI-based, cloud platform that brings together store associates, approved influencers, and products for the most dynamic online e-commerce machine to date.

“We are at the forefront of social e-commerce, using video to put virtual yet personalized salespeople directly in the online store,” said Allon Caidar, co-founder and CEO at TVPage. “It’s a full cycle marketing engine for customer engagement and online shopping, turning companies into their own social media destination that pops up as people search for products.”

Bustling virtual storefronts

Large retailers and other companies worldwide are using TVPage to replicate the kind of expert selling consumers crave. For example, when a retailer signs up, they gain a virtual storefront for their own sales associates, as well as independent influencers, all of whom serve as social brand ambassadors. Using a mobile app or web browser, these ambassadors keep consumers engaged by uploading videos, photos, and other information about products on the retailer’s website. They use social media to share their content, answer customer questions, and invite interested consumers to special online events.

“Consumers can chat with social brand ambassadors anytime to find out if a product comes in a different color or size,” said Caidar. “Ambassadors might decide to schedule beauty makeovers based on the questions they’ve received, or spotlight gaming releases that reflect breaking trends. Customers can purchase products directly from their videos.”

Companies can set and monitor social ambassador metrics from one dashboard, paying their own employees based on individual performance goals. TVPage also helps its customers find and manage independent influencers, including sourcing and paying freelance social ambassadors.

Read More…

In Foundries, Article

How Drones and Robotics Revolutionize Building Inspections

nderneath the gleaming surface of modern megacities is an archaic patchwork of antiquated building inspection processes long overdue for a 21st century makeover. Meet H3 Dynamics, a cloud-based inspection services platform that is using drones and ground robots as the eyes and ears of engineers currently grounded by the pandemic and long hampered by last-century norms.

“By automating and digitizing visual inspection processes, we’re creating an accessible layer of information on structures and buildings in any city or corporate location,” said Taras Wankewycz, founder and CEO of H3 Dynamics. “Organizations can track the physical conditions of urban and remote facilities with a level of safety, efficiency, and accuracy not possible before.”

Perfecting the Human Plus Machine Equation

Headquartered in Singapore, H3 Dynamics customers include companies and government agencies worldwide across a long list of sectors such as smart cities, real estate, maritime, oil and gas, utilities, renewable energy, and mining. Customers might be private equity firms that own facilities, insurance companies, site operators, safety inspection and certification organizations, or regulators involved in legislating safety mandates. H3 Dynamics also has clients that resell its digitized visual monitoring services to their own customers.

What customers have in common are hard-to-reach sites, from the tallest skyscrapers to remote industrial outposts that defy the most intrepid human being’s effort to scale. But this is not a story about machines replacing people.

Drones and ground robots, as well as people, can capture information from buildings with video and other camera images, bringing this data into the H3 Dynamics platform. The system uses technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D modeling to create an interactive map that displays defects on the scanned structure surfaces, classifying potential risks, whether aesthetic anomalies or unsafe areas that require repair. Civil engineers or other recognized industry experts review and validate the automated findings. Customers can generate a written report that details safety risks. In addition, the company has created shelter systems where drones and other robots can get batteries recharged and upload data to the H3 Dynamics cloud.

Read More…

In Foundries, Interview

Increasing Team Effectiveness with SAP.iO Startup Cloverleaf

Team effectiveness helps employees integrate, increases employee satisfaction, and improves productivity. Cloverleaf, a startup in the Future of Work cohort at the SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco, helps to build great teams and improve employee engagement using existing employee data and assessments to provide insight into increased team effectiveness. We sat down with Cloverleaf Co-Founder Darrin Murriner to better understand the imperative for building great teams.

Q: What does Cloverleaf do?

A: Cloverleaf helps build great teams and improve employee engagement using existing employee data and assessments to provide insight into increased team effectiveness. From teams at small businesses to large enterprises, we equip employers and empower employees to give the greatest contribution to their organization and have the most fulfilling opportunity in their role. Cloverleaf gives users intelligent nudges and reminders before and after meetings to improve their team behavior.

Q: Why is team effectiveness so important?

A: Thriving teams have higher levels of productivity and higher levels of employee engagement. Creating strong teams is important because decreased levels of employee engagement lead to higher absenteeism, more errors, accidents and defects, lower productivity, lower profitability, and lower job growth.

Q: How has the pandemic impacted the need for Cloverleaf’s solution?

A: With many employees now working remotely, teams need to learn how to add value to their organization in a new environment. By providing team-based coaching in the flow of work, we give leaders the tools and insights they need to be effective leaders with remote and cross-functional teams. The goal of our product is to increase transparency and trust in a way that leaves everyone feeling a stronger sense of belonging and purpose. As a result, we have inclusive team environments that improve productivity.

Read More…

In New York, Foundries, Article, Inclusiveness

The Eyes Have It: The Future Of Human-Machine Relations

Has this ever happened to you? Shopping for fresh vegetables at your local market when you notice that special someone across the aisle? And when your eyes lock, you know there is that kind of Mona Lisa smile directed at you behind the mask. You can’t help but feel the sparks fly and that something amazing is about to happen – just from a single look.

That’s what one company is planning to make happen in the workplace of the future. But with a twist! This kind of eye contact is all about making the daily work of employees more convenient, ergonomically-friendly, and even fun by controlling applications based on user intention – via eye tracking.

The future of human-machine interaction

Munich-based enterprise software company 4tiitoo is a leader in eye track interaction. Their mission – to make work more productive, healthy, and attractive to workers.

4tiitoo’s Natural User Interaction to all Applications software platform, or NUIA, revolutionizes the way people interact with devices by using machine learning to model eye control/tracking to predict user intention.

This kind of hands-free eye control provides increased efficiency and a better user experience for people (like me) glued to their workplace computer by reducing mouse-click interactions.

An escape from the perpetual mouse trap

This may be hard to believe, but the humble, ever-steadfast computer mouse is now over 50 years old. And let’s be honest. It has not evolved enough to address the enormously complex and rapidly evolving human-machine computing environments.

Think about it. 4tiitoo posits that an average user like you or I will make thousands of mouse clicks, maybe even tens of thousands, in a given work week and cover several kilometers a day of mouse movement.

With 20-30% a day spent on mouse interactions, user productivity is not what it could be. Plus, that little mouse is still not the healthiest of interfaces to use in terms of repetitive motion stress.

Read More…

In Foundries, San Francisco, Portfolio News, COVID-19

SAP.iO Startup Cuéntame Supports Mental Health in the Workplace

In 2020, the global pandemic and the related economic uncertainty have increased stress levels for employees around the world. The loss of productivity caused by the surge in mental health disorders is estimated to cost companies a trillion dollars per year. We sat down with Regina Athie, the founder of SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco startup Cuéntame, to discuss mental health and better understand Cuéntame’s solution, which supports the mental health of Spanish-speaking employees in Latin America and North America.

Q: What does Cuéntame do to support mental health?

A: Cuéntame provides personalized mental health services and resources for all employees at their convenience. By using questionnaires and artificial intelligence (AI) technology, we are able to place employees on tailored tracks that suit their needs best because mental health solutions are not one-size-fits-all. Cuéntame offers a full spectrum of tools, lessons, and coping techniques, including mediation, webinars, podcasts, and psychotherapy.

Q: Why did you found Cuéntame?

A: Each of Cuéntame’s co-founders has a unique experience with mental health in their personal life. For me, I realized there was a need for more creative mental health solutions when my dad was diagnosed with depression, but our insurance refused to pay for any treatments. Depression is just like a physical illness, such as cancer, yet society and employers do not make it a priority. Cuéntame provides a tailored digital solution to meet mental health needs for Spanish-speaking employees at any company.

Q: How has the importance of mental health in the workplace changed since the beginning of the pandemic?

A: Before the pandemic, mental health was seen as a luxury. It didn’t focus on preventative measures–instead, it focused only on providing support to employees in a crisis. Now, in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, mental health is largely about providing tools to support employees and their families cope with the symptoms of our current situation, whether it is depression, anxiety, loneliness, or burnout. Our treatments to these problems include providing tools to overcome these symptoms, teaching resiliency, and creating communities of support in and outside of work.

Read More…

In Foundries, Singapore, Portfolio News

Beyond Smart Cities: How Drones And Robotics Revolutionize Building Inspections

Underneath the gleaming surface of modern megacities is an archaic patchwork of antiquated building inspection processes long overdue for a 21st Century makeover. Meet H3 Dynamics, a cloud-based inspection services platform that’s using drones and ground robots as the eyes and ears of engineers currently grounded by the pandemic, and long hampered by last century norms.

h a level of safety, efficiency, and accuracy not possible before.”  

Perfecting the human plus machine equation

Headquartered in Singapore, H3 Dynamics’ customers include companies and government agencies worldwide across a long list of sectors such as smart cities, real estate, maritime, oil and gas, utilities, renewable energy, and mining. Customers might be private equity firms that own facilities, insurance companies, site operators, safety inspection and certification organizations, or regulators involved in legislating safety mandates. H3 Dynamics also has clients that resell its digitized visual monitoring services to their own customers. What customers have in common are hard to reach sites, from the tallest skyscrapers to remote industrial outposts that defy the most intrepid human being’s effort to scale. But this isn’t a story about machines replacing people.

Drones and ground robots, as well as people, can capture information from buildings with video and other camera images, bringing this data into the H3 Dynamics platform. The system uses technologies including AI and 3D modeling to create an interactive map that displays defects on the scanned structure surfaces, classifying potential risks, whether aesthetic anomalies or unsafe areas that require repair. Civil engineers or other recognized industry experts review and validate the automated findings. Customers can generate a written report that details safety risks. In addition, the company has created shelter systems where drones and other robots can get batteries recharged, and upload data to the H3 Dynamics cloud.

Read More…