Challenges and opportunities of digital business model and products innovation in the steel wire industry

Abstract

Innovation and digitalization are the most popular business concepts of our age. Not only disruptors, but also incumbents are transforming the way they work and redefining their value proposition to incorporate the digital element into their business. Bekaert is no different. In their quest to stay on top of their game, Bekaert is working on digitalization on all levels: customer engagement, industry 4.0 and business models & products. To tackle this latter pillar, Bekaert has a Discovery Innovation team which was recently merged with the Global Business Development team into “Corporate Strategy, Portfolio & Venturing”. The consultancy project as described in this paper was carried out within this team, under the guidance of Damien Feuillan, Innovation Manager. The scope of the project was to help Bekaert embrace digitization and create new opportunities, not only by digitizing Bekaert’s products, but also by digitizing the business model behind it in order to ensure value creation for the customer. This report addresses the challenges as well as best practices examples of how to digitize products in a way they create value for all stakeholders involved. Several brainstorming and co-creation sessions led to a number of ideas to make Bekaert’s products digital and based on a prioritization opportunity matrix, the three most promising ideas were picked to develop further. A deep dive in each of these three ideas led to the creation of an innovation ecosystem for each of them and several contacts with stakeholders were made in order to bring the idea as far as possible in the “Discovery” stage before it can be handed off to the “Incubation” team. For the Connected Spools, a proposal for PoC and Pilot was done and in case Bekaert accepts, this PoC can be launched as soon as July. For the smart bra concept, two stakeholders are ready to test Bekaert samples and sign an NDA. A first draft of JDA will also be sent to them in the coming weeks. Finally, for the smart fences, several stakeholders were contacted in order to create a thorough market research. Recommendations and steps to follow for the coming weeks and months are given for each of these final three ideas, as well as a general recommendation for Bekaert to base its future innovation structure on the example of Kloeckner. We believe that pursuing the ideas developed during this project will set Bekaert up for a learning process in digitization and help them create value for the future.