From a Demobooster pitch to a Veikkaus product
In Veikkaus, the target is to get new innovations on market every year – and not just any innovation, but the ones that bring significant extra value to customers and the company. To get something brilliant out to the customers every year, the new business innovation needs to be efficient.
“We need many innovation partners and a great deal of candidates for the innovation funnel in order to get something new out to customers each year”, says Kimmo Koskinen, Innovation Manager at Veikkaus Oy.
In the process, only a few of the ideas pass through proof of concept (PoC) phase and customer testing. Two candidates have been found through DIMECC’s Demobooster, the first is reaching the end of the funnel and is about to appear as final product soon and the second one is about to enter the funnel.
Nortal and Game Family cooperation
Veikkaus representatives visited a Demobooster Demo Day in Otaniemi, Espoo in 2018, and decided it was a concept worth trying out. The first challenge Veikkaus presented was on the technology track.
“We hoped that the propositions would use any trending technology, such as block chain, and use this technology to bring something new to our customers”, Koskinen explains.
The Demobooster process ended up with an agreement with Nortal and in a year the idea proceeded all the way from the pitch to the proof of concept (PoC) phase and beyond.
“With the results from the PoC, we are now building a new solution to make the Veikkaus and Veikkaus Game Family cooperation more efficient”, Koskinen says.
Mirum and Excitement as a Service
The second candidate found in another Demo Day is to go through PoC’s and customer testing this autumn. According to Veikkaus, Mirum’s proposal about Excitement as a service sounded like something that had potential and the company proved to have a team big enough to bring it through.
The pitches were held September 15th and the seven members of the Veikkaus Innovation Steering group had evaluated them before the meeting next day. The next week was reserved for more questions and offers and the decision on funding was made October 5th. The proposal will proceed into PoC and closed customer testing before the year ends.
“The end of the year will show if this turns out to be something that our customers are fond of and if we are going to proceed with it”, Koskinen explains.
“If that’s the case, the product could come out in 2022”.
“Could not get any easier”
To foster breakthrough innovations Veikkaus has used different methods. In 2019 the company organized a week-long event with international start-up participants, where it took care of the scouting and invitations. Compared to that, in Demobooster the biggest job is formulating the challenge.
“It needs to be open enough, but still have enough detail. This has been a learning process for us as well”, Koskinen states.
In Demobooster, the companies were contacted and screened by the Demobooster crew and the challenge and pitches were presented in a virtual meeting.
“Our job was to listen, analyze and discuss. It could not get any easier than that”, Koskinen recalls.
