 Yeah, thank you very much and welcome to my presentation about the innovation framework for sustainable product and venture building So first talking about the relevance of this topic So in 2021 Germany only produced over 670 million tons of co2 and this is it is expected that digitalization or digital solutions are able to reduce them by 20 percent and So who am I or who are we we are what x we are a company builder focusing on developing sustainable digital solutions Solutions and trying to get like this leverage on helping to overcome those climate issues in the long run And how are we doing this actually so we have a pretty simple step and process first You have to find the idea then second we have to validate the idea and Third we have to build the idea actually So and today I'm going to talk to you about each of those three steps Let's start with actually finding the idea And so for us and it is important that the idea has some kind of sustainable Component in it you might ask what does sustainability mean in this context, so it really depends on the business model So it could be the pretty simple equivalents of co2 saves to the Competition or maybe mapping it to the stg's to have an alignment there I said really depends for case to case so there we have those two areas Meaning that when we get approached by a company our customers are often middle-stand middle-stand companies from Germany So they either want to transform one of their existing products sustainable Let's say a company once they turn their production circular or They want to explore new ideas in the news basis For example company approached us Wanted to find ideas in the sustainable construction space So what we do there? We kind of look at Opportunity areas to see where there might be a match for the existing business model for our customer Here are some example of for opportunity areas. We're looking in we're looking at so Rental and sharing maybe tracking and offsetting supply chain transparency and Recycling and refurbishment. I don't think that I have to explain what each of those category means But I'll illustrate it how we actually do it with an example So one of our customers was next March next March is a b2b software as a service provider And they're focusing on OEMs that operate in the construction space like for example Bosch that produces those drilling machines or Hilti and They provide an ERP software that integrates Over the whole value chain until the end customer Meaning that they have this b2b2b or b2b2c kind of business model and also as said they have Products Integrated over the whole value chain. For example this EDI connect which helps to connect the EDI of the OEM with the one of the retailer the ERP connect which Provides the product availability on the website of the retailer You name it so they have a bunch of products but important here is that they were super close to the OEMs and Realized that there is a huge Potential because of the batteries of the drilling machines because often when they're used they get thrown away or Left behind or stored in the storage room for forever and nothing happens and this was also pre-election time So they were also expecting this bearbok effect I'm kind of thinking that after the election everything will turn green and Recycling has to be a has to be forced on every company. So they were approaching us to find an idea in this recycling Circular kind of sphere So what we did there we started by mapping the life cycle of a product and starting by design engineering, sourcing, manufacturing, sales, usage and end of life and Then we had a look on what different business models exist in each of those steps So what kind of sustainable business models exist there? So for example in sales there are rental platforms refurbing economy end-of-life you have giveaway platform and recycling as well and So then after that we went a step further and had a look on what exactly the exact and what companies already exist in those spaces For example in rental platforms. There's Grover. You might know this B2C renting platform In giveaway platforms. There's too good to go That operates there. So having this kind of knowledge We then organized innovation workshop one of those classic design thinking ideation workshops and were then able to find ideas in or it was like a total of seven ideas I think in exactly those spaces and you have to imagine that this Idea finding process the output or outcome of this one is like a long list of ideas of Pretty high-level ideas between five and ten ideas which have to be validated in the next step So let's have a look on how we validate the actual business idea So the usual framework consists of analyzing the desirability To see if the customer actually likes the product where we would do customer interviews second the viability Where we check from a financial perspective if it makes sense. It's like a classical business case modeling and third the feasibility To see if it is even possible to build the idea mostly from engineering kind of perspective and Here Obviously we also check the sustainability here metaphorically is shown as a fourth Circle so let's have a look on how we're actually doing this We made it as a three steps process First it is important to check on how much the weighting of The sustainability as a criteria is actually as you know some of you might think hey It might be the most important one in the business model But as already said some of our customers are German middle-stand companies So they're already happy when the business model is a little bit more sustainable than their previous offering they had Second then the actual evaluation and here as already mentioned as well It totally depends on the business model what we're doing So it could be measuring the co2 equivalence to the previous version Looking for the alignment with the STG's Generally, yeah, you name it operating into those opportunity areas that really depends to the case to case specifics and third then the challenging where we all come together in our Team and have this kind of sparring rounds where we challenge the business model sometimes We also talk take external experts with us to actually Look that we really haven't sustainable impact and not fall into this green wash green washing mosh pit So example how we did it So our parent company Vismann approached us during COVID times, so they wanted to help the their employees to be active and This with a sustainable benefit kind of so they had the idea about the sport app where they would provide planting a tree for each kilometer and Our task was then to To validate if it makes sense to the to build the idea and spoiler The outcome of this idea was this classical running app Connected with some smart devices Where you would run? The running would be tracked where you could have team challenges where then and trees would be planted And overall it was a huge success. So we had a really high participant rate So there were six thousand seven hundred persit participants I don't know if it's probably like a third of the employees of this man. They were like over eight hundred thousand trees planted and Also, it was lightly shared on all social media platforms and there was even like this Garmin health finalist most innovative solution in engagement Kind of thing award. Yeah So, let's have a look on why this idea was validated in the first place so first this component of sustainability as an incentive so Visman, I don't know if you know the company so they're providing They're helping out at the providing energy efficient heating so they building heat pumps For example, so they're already operating into this in this sustainability sphere So it was kind of a value fit to also help their To also provide this incentive to their customers at their employees Second the focus was then set on Local impact so I already mentioned that this man approached us first with the idea to Just plant trees and when a big company talks about something where they would want to plant trees it's kind of a red flag going on or a red light and So what we did there we put the focus on local impact and meaning Trees were planted. I think around their Headquarter where they would have like actual influence and the employees would actually see what impact they had And I think like nowadays they even bought some land in Finland where they're doing the tree planting themselves so so it's not like some kind of project somewhere in the middle of nowhere where you would not have any influence and Third also important the social aspect this team challenges this I won't say social pressure that they could In a gamified way challenge each other Which helped a lot to engage the employees and therefore it became an overall success It even started to become an white label version So or is it's in the making or it's becoming a white label version and one of those big tech players apparently already is using it and So if the idea is validated then probably of the most important parts is that you actually have to build the idea and Here many people are thinking that the idea per se has to be sustainable and then it's already a sustainable business but Therefore I want to talk to you about the reason on why what impact we can have in product building So First there are more and more consumers using the internet So as we all know every job nowadays became digital in every profession You have to use the internet and also in emerging economies. You have more and more people with access to the internet second, I Don't know if you remember back in the days They're not that old but like 20 25 at 20 0 5 2010 like the websites back in back then They were like pretty simple With html css and so the average Size of a website was about 500 kilobytes And nowadays if you look at the website like for every small product you have this interactive website with three auto playing videos and Everything in it and therefore and the average website size Is about 2.3 megabytes? For example, Amazon is 5 megabytes. So you have like two factors. You have more people using the internet plus you have more energy used per internet usage meaning overall you have more energy that is used and therefore the internet traffic has tripled since 2015 and It is expected for the energy usage related to the traditional solutions to become like one fifth of the overall energy consumption Worldwide So what does this have to do with product building? so the internet usage depends on mainly four factors First the devices we used the networks Our capabilities the data centers and the manufacturing in digital products building we can influence three of those Three of those factors which account for about 84 percent of the whole energy usage So therefore you could have a real influence meaning that you can influence And the resources that are needed plus the hosting you can In influence the performance of the tool and you can influence the device backward capabilities Meaning that not every product has to be available only for the newest version of IOS Starting from iPhone 12 plus that the users are forced to buy a new device from time to time and you can generally influence the amount of data that are produced saved and Transferred So what you actually can do there and so in this is the product building simplified you have on the one side you have the cloud and Hardware data depending on how you're hosting and on the other side you have the software part So what you can do on the cloud side first you have to choose the right tooling for the job So as already mentioned, there is not always this fancy framework Necessary like sometimes the HTML and CSS is enough Also It is important to use auto scaling like if you're just starting your startup There's no need for cloud capabilities to host one million people So it's better to to update it the more you grow and Also important to delete unnecessary data for example in backups That there's like no need to do store the backups from five years ago Regarding hosting also important to hosting low-carbon regions. It doesn't matter how green the actual hardware is when It is in a place where the overall energy mix is Fossil fuel-based and it's still not Sustainable and also to have the hosting is possible to the To the close to the customers or consumers In the software part you can actually have influence by choosing the right programming language so per se and the interpreting languages like Python are Less efficient than for example C sharp or C++ and also to have the software always updated to Clean the caching frequently or don't clean it that frequently as much as needed to optimize the code optimize the assets and always measure the impact you have or look where there could be improvements and And One part of product development is the technical part on the other side You have also the business part where you could have actually impact on the sustainability or have Which is also impacted by the sustainability. So first you have the marketing aspects Here for example, obviously if not necessary, you shouldn't do like print media But also in targeting when targeting of digital ads when your target customer is in Berlin only There's no need to make like a German why it's targeting targeting every possible kind of person second the pricing There it depends there you have two possibilities to either have like a premium pricing model since you have this sustainability component in your business model and Therefore the customers might be willing to pay more or you could also use the competitive pricing meaning that your be and that the customer will prefer you compared to the Other model theory and also communication as we all know this inability is a sensitive topic So it's important to have this fact based consistent communication to not fall in this green washing pit So let's look at our last example again So our parent company this month and this is their sustainable strategy Leap lead by example empower people to act Advocate to foster a movement and partner to scale up. So they came to us with the proposal to find an idea in Exactly the empower and the partner space so we started there with this idea finding ideation part and What then? Happened after this we were founded our newest venture Climony So Climony focuses on customer or consumer Education in teaching them on how to become more sustainable or live in a more sustainable way and The ones that are not inevitable or the reductions that are not inevitable can be offset Over the application furthermore they provide like a partner network Where other companies operating sustainable space can Put their their offering Where the consumers can get to the Informations and therefore you have kind of like this match where on the one hand you have the businesses providing their information on the other hand You have consumers that can therefore with this information live a more sustainable lifestyle and So what actually happened there in product building so every product After this build process We have this checklist with about I don't know at the moment like 200 Questions we check each of them to see how sustainable our product is This is some random example questions that we check in each each release So and what improvements we did over the roadmap and for example we used vectors instead of pixels that are easier To load Seconds there were no videos used And third as an alternative for gifts we used lotty files Also an intelligent caching was used where on the user side that not for every loading of the new page There has to be new data transferred and also the design is optimized and also in the business part The focus was made on reduction rather than just offsetting And also it is aligned with the off oxford offsetting principles so coming back to our process and Talk to you about first finding the idea and then second Validating the idea and third building the idea. So this is obviously the simplified process so our real processing quotes Here in the first and the second part in the research print and the idea validation we're applying this kind of Design thinking framework you might know this double diamond about idea finding and Validation and the product builder and we're operating after this Lee and build measure learn principle the classical lean start up and This was already my presentation and thank you very much and I'm open for your questions Thank you so much and questions comments ideas Anything burning? This might be a little controversial But why should we build something for the sixth time that already exists in the case of? Climony where if you look in any app store you basically see five offerings that do education Unsustainability and also help you to compensate anything I think it's just like if we build the same thing three times. It's just a waste of resources, isn't it? You there's actually the founder of Climony there so you cannot nobody if you want to explain it you can actually Obviously, it's a good question. I think on the one hand We have yet not reached any point of space in which the total awareness in society has reached any point in which we can say okay Now everyone is actually educated So we believe for ourselves that we actually have a different approach to bringing this product and to the market so I'm also reaching consumers in a different way and also having our own approach to Education so it's a general question and totally get your point that why do something over and over again But on the other hand in our market in arm the way our markets work Competition is a good thing because it actually drives the best ideas to succeed and Will eliminate the ones that do not succeed? On the way so ensuring that the best ideas will come through I believe that with Climony We can actually help succeeding here And yes, obviously a lot of things about market economics that we can discuss but yeah If I'm only allowed for one follow-up question. So what is it that you do better than? competitors so Like most competitors that you actually look and let's say it's you to education space Don't really provide any actual education like background knowledge on if you look if you look into the app store and you look for any like CO2 application you find like some with like super generic tips and Then I don't know some that even lead you into consuming product and service etc. So What we do is for example, we partner up with the different like we are basically building an open platform in which different partners can participate with their knowledge and their approach and We make this a rather open Approach and not only like that. We are on the stage gate to what information is shown in the application Yeah, I think It was a bit too loud. Thank you And next up I think yes, obviously we have a unique brand and That we built around our product which is able to you to reach different kind of people than existing services Hope this answers your question Thank you. Fascinating following questions to this or anything else Why would you focus on? The carbon footprint of consumers instead of big tech or companies in general like The Individual or their carbon footprint doesn't really matter in the big picture. Does it? It's a question again to you Could could you please fall for once repeat your question? I wasn't aware that you were talking to me He asked on on why we're focusing on the reduction of consumers and not the corporate Corporates I think on all levels of society we have to reduce carbon emissions and The one that that we can influence most at the moment and in our own lives is the ones that Is it's the life that we control? I do not at all say that we should not Help or demand from corporations to reduce their CO2 emissions themselves And I guess most of us are also employees So we have a voice at our own workplace. We can also educate about that what and I think yes Obviously we need to start somewhere and I think in any way every ton of CO2 that can be avoided or reduced Is a meaningful contribution? I'm not saying we should be doing the either or the other I'm just saying that the one that approach that we are taking as the one that focuses on individuals on private households Not at all to say that we do not want any actions to be seen in the in the corporate space, but Obviously if you have a range with a variety of options that you can do and where you can invest your time with your money and We with our partner Or our partner companies Chose that to follow that path not at all saying that the other ones aren't necessary or not even even more needed And maybe also important that Climony is an example of one of the ventures we build in this space which happens to be a B2C Focus venture because our parent company asks us to operate in this space So I'm generally in building digital business models and we also are focusing on helping Corporates reduce their CO2 footprint. So we see this overall importance Further questions Yeah, I just have a question Do you see an increase in the interest? So you were telling that you are looking into the stakeholders actually the companies are you working for if? Sustainability is relevant for them, right? So this is this is your starting point I don't know how long are you operating already? Do you see an increase meanwhile something which indicates that it does matter? So we also have historically seen our company was focusing on this deep tech IOT sphere so Only since like one or two years. You asked its transition to focus in the sustainability sphere and so what we are seeing is an overall interest of companies to Operate in this to become more sustainable For example, you can go to every page of a middle shunt company in there You see a header section sustainability climate awareness. So everyone is theoretically open but more not Many people operate do actually anything so it's like at the moment It's more of an idea what you could theoretically do and therefore we're often doing like research Sprints, we're often doing this idea validation part, but like actual sustainable products that are built or actual Request for building some products are a few at the moment, but it's growing hopefully Further questions if not I have a question if I may You said you're always trying not to get into this pet of greenwashing and Sustainability is very easy to be for because we don't know what sustainability is so each company can say we're sustainable We're starting striving for sustainability, but it's not defined There's a thousand definitions of what's included. So when measuring the impact what are your criteria or what? academic or practical foundations are you building it on because It means a lot of different things to different people companies regions countries and so on Yeah, so so there's like no standard framework. We're using at the moment and Therefore we have first also a look at the company. So we made like this kind of background check if this company Actually is willing to make this transition in the sustainability sphere and it's not like I Don't want to throw shade on any company But it's not like an oil rick company that wants to have like one small Sustainable digital idea offering and therefore it really depends on case-by-case We try not to focus on co2 equivalents only since it's like not an overall or intersectional approach but Kind of Let's say for example check if it's An alignment with the STG's and So there's really like no hard framework. We're using there, but it depends really on case-by-case As an answer Also if I may add just to the question I think what we can what we always do and this is part of the idea validation is to talking to industry or Knowledge experts in that sphere. So when talking When thinking of how to validate the concept an idea then we could try to get multiple perspectives on that idea to see Okay, who and what things of this in which way tells of what additional things to take into consideration So that we get come to a broad and holistic perspective Okay, and I get the point and I find it very Valuable to see this sector definitely have other perspectives that needs to be taken into account however Sustainability is only recently taking social spect perspectives into account or social accountability for Products where it's produced whatsoever same goes for software like I haven't heard Not criticizing anyone here just saying Social justice in programming is not very big at the moment And so how to take resources water by diversity There's no framework. I know but I just want to be a bit critical of the idea saying it's so easy to to Name something sustainable, but there's no It's still in the making and it's still this Discussionable so how can how can it become like even better in the future like what can you build this on? when you are Counseling or creating products for other companies So here I also have to say that at the moment we're from these classical ESG We're currently operating into the in the e-part they're focusing on ecological ecological Sphere so we're totally aware that there are also social issues So at the moment and we're focusing there and trying to expand more into the future also take other factors into the consideration and then Could you repeat the question or no? Do you see any? Possibilities of creating a framework of course it cannot be static. It has to be dynamic It has to be learning Dynamic framework that and criteria that you can use but Are you already seeing some do you have to gain some learnings to see where this could be heading in the future? Based on the couple of products you have been inventing or creating for companies Good question Maybe if you have So so I think maybe first of all also to it to the whole room. I think the point you're mentioning is as a very known problem, right that you can stick a sustainable label on something because you consider it from one like Aspect right and maybe just in terms of how much energy efficient this is but it doesn't take into Count what other topics along the value chain it touches and where also like maybe specific Electrists other topics come into consideration that maybe or are influenced that are not taken into consideration in terms of how to move forward to build a framework To take this into consideration. I think there are great Already assessments out there for example like when we work I mean in German. It's now called the Lieferketten Sorgfalz Flichtgesetz. I think at that point We as Wattix benefit a lot from our cooperation with with this one because they evaluate every of their suppliers With the huge questionnaire of like, I don't know 200 or 300 different questions regarding touching all these different aspects So I think there are a lot of approaches to this I'm not saying they're perfect or that they're finalized yet But I think it is policy in that sense that also driving more and more the necessity to define One standard of how to define things have when to label them in which way So what we can only do we can or what we try is we try to stay open and try to learn a lot from the input that We're getting through different people that we are approaching when we're talking to these about these kind of topics Conferences like these are also great because then we get different perspectives again, and but I think lastly it has to come down to To one regulation approach in which we get defined when we can call something sustainable or whatnot Thank you. Any last remarks Thank you very much for taking the time. Thank you for contributing Enjoy the evening the last of bits and boime and don't forget the ending conference is then in