Kongsberg Digital’s Partnership Innovation Journey: Insights from ETCA Liaison Manager Simone Kranendonk

Shell’s Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam (ETCA) is an open campus in the center of Amsterdam. The campus holds modern co-working spaces, a lab for testing innovations and an international network rich in expertise and experience within the energy sector. The ETCA ecosystem brings together innovative energy companies to co-innovate and solve the world’s biggest energy challenges.

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After learning more about Kongsberg Digital’s journey at ETCA, we had the opportunity to sit down with ETCA Liaison and Community Manager Simone Kranendonk to get her insights on co-innovation and why it’s an essential part of the energy transition.

Thank you for joining us today, Simone. Let’s start at the beginning – can you tell us a bit more about your role at ETCA and what it involves?  

As a liaison and community manager, I support and manage the connections in our open campus ecosystem. Membership at ETCA comes with a mutual commitment to open innovation, and my job is to facilitate collaboration by identifying the synergies between our members and opportunities to scale game changing ideas.

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What’s most important to me is that people can find each other and work together efficiently. It all starts with being together under one roof, making it easier to meet the right people, and leads up to partnerships that accelerate innovations. This means that my days are filled with networking and catch-up talks, connecting the businesses of our members, ensuring we meet our campus deliverables and keeping movement in the ETCA innovation funnel.

No small task! When it comes to co-innovation projects, how is ETCA facilitating collaboration that produces outcomes with impact and not just recommendations?  

It’s important to move from talking about co-innovation to doing it. We focus on bringing together the most important stakeholders of the energy transition: the regions, universities, industry, and innovators so that we can identify synergies and mutual ambitions. We have a lot of technological solutions in-house and we need these stakeholders on board to drive real impact.  

At ETCA, we have the facilities to scale innovation projects from lab to market and a platform to introduce new ideas for product and service developments. It’s a unique place for co-innovation, bringing the development themes of motivated companies closer to the expertise of Shell and other ETCA members. That’s what enables us to accelerate technology development and applications at scale to tackle challenges like plastic circularity, CO₂ capture and low carbon fuels.

Can you share one piece of advice for getting stakeholders on board in the early stages of co-innovation projects?

It’s really about understanding the strategy and value, and having a different kind of mindset. No one knows what the future energy system will look like – that’s the complexity we work with every day, and no single company can achieve the transition to cleaner energy alone. At ETCA we navigate the complexity of a commercial energy company by asking questions such as how do we find the solutions that will work for the energy mix of the future? Are these solutions feasible and what’s the value both financially and beyond?

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Start by asking questions, then test ideas with the people involved and of course, make sure to include the experts in the field.

That’s a great approach. Drawing from your own experience at ETCA, please share some key learnings in co-innovation – what works, and what doesn’t?

If I had to sum it up briefly, I believe, there are three main challenges:

1. Problem ownership: I believe we need problem owners to drive innovation funnels. What I see is a group of highly motivated individuals working in systems with strong structures and dynamics. Priorities of paying customers influence progress of the innovation funnel as innovation takes effort, investment and time. If we want to accelerate the energy transition in the current landscape, I believe we need problem ownership, resulting in the space and budget to integrate open innovation into day-to-day workstreams.  

2. Business focus. Many innovative ideas do not make it to the market. This can and must be improved to accelerate the energy transition. Additionally, in our collaboration funnel, it’s not always easy to pinpoint what bigger problem is being solved. That refers to my opinion above: start by asking questions. What feature or application do we really need to accelerate the energy transition? What traditional barriers do we have to overcome?  

3. Sharing information. Energy is a vital aspect of our modern lives, and the energy industry has high standards in keeping data secure. However, in the energy transition, I believe we must let go of keeping our innovations for ourselves and move toward solving the broader energy challenge. As Edda (Kongsberg Digital’s Director of Partnership Innovation based at ETCA) mentioned in her interview – people and companies often approach co-innovation with a tactical mindset when actually they can share beyond traditional boundaries, especially in safe co-innovation spaces like ETCA, and eventually benefit even more by opening up.

Can you tell us a bit more about Kongsberg Digital’s journey at ETCA so far?

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The Kongsberg Digital team proved their dedication from the beginning. They have been breaking through traditional barriers in several ways, especially when it comes to information sharing. It’s been amazing to see how Kongsberg Digital is taking collaboration in ETCA to the next level, for example by organizing the first tech sharing session of ETCA in October 2023 - a bold move if you ask me.

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In this session, developers of EPAM Systems, Databricks and Kongsberg Digital gave insights in their solutions, within the boundaries of company policies. This was a great milestone for our campus because there were three member companies sharing together and eight different member companies in the audience. The conversations were open, honest, and fun and everyone walked away energized with new ideas and motivation.

That’s really exciting to hear! Going forward, how do you see Kongsberg Digital continuing to make the most of their co-location at ETCA?

Across our campus, members with mindsets like Kongsberg Digital who are open to sharing and co-innovating are frontrunners alongside Shell, showcasing the possibilities of innovation and collaboration to the rest of the world. Storytelling and sharing successes – also beyond ETCA – are shining examples and great reminders that collaboration in an open innovation campus is possible. This proactive way of collaborating with other teams results in strong relationships between ETCA members and takes innovation beyond existing partnerships.

Simone, thank you for taking the time to share with us today. We look forward to further collaboration – and of course, we’ll see you again at the upcoming Tomorrow Show 2024 and Future Digital Twin events!

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To stay informed about developments in the Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam, follow ETCA on LinkedIn!

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