Corporate Side – Perspective of a Multi-National Enterprise

In the following, the six in depth interviews with Airbus employees who worked together with the BizLab for a diverse set of reasons are presented. Subsequently additional interviews with the BizLab Leader in Hamburg and the founder of one of the start-ups hosted in the accelerator are presented.

In-depth interviews with employees from Airbus were conducted in order to explore their perception in the context of the collaboration with the BizLab. Even though the employees have similar educational backgrounds, as most of them are engineers, they are holding very different positions within Airbus. While some of the participants are still working in technical positions, others are now working as managers. Their answers to the same questions therefore provide insights from different perspectives and represent a combination of different hierarchies, departments and jobs at Airbus. Profile information for the in-depth interview participants can be obtained from Table 4.

Name Gender At Airbus since Position Participant

Jens Lohmar

Male 17 years Development of ventilation systems

P1 Bernard

Marmann Male 6 years Manager Final Assembly Line

A380 P2

Florian

Eilken Male 5 years Quality Manager Final

Assembly Line A320 P3

Stephan Rohde

Male 3 years Quality Conformance Manager P4 Ralf

Schliwa Male 32 years VC – Engineering Cabin &

Cargo P5

Gregor Endres

Male 15 years Composites Research (BizLab Project Leader)

P6

Table 4 – Profile information of in-depth interview participants

Participant 1

P1 is working at Airbus since 2000 and has gone through several airplane programs involving the development of ventilation systems ever since. In his career, he passed through the entire development, from the conception phase until airplane accompanying services. Since the last two years, he is concerned about working on innovative concepts including new working procedures and technologies in order to define improvements in the future. As a result, he got in touch with the BizLab as his current working topics mostly involve innovative and new business areas. He claims that Airbus provides ‘experimenting areas’ for employees working in respective fields as well as he himself initiated the connection. Basically, his supervisor also supports the department but simultaneously believes that the current resources are not on the scale for following collaborations. On top of that, he mentioned new agile project methods (SCRUM) that were implemented and that he endorses innovative working methods and is open-minded for the regarding topics.

In general, as he is very familiar with and has a realistic understanding of the company’s structure. He criticizes the efforts and attempts of Airbus to implement alterations due to highly bureaucratic hierarchies and structures as well as limited resources. On the other hand, he already got in touch with the start-up mentality and is interested in their working procedures. Despite his traditional engineering mindset, his first experience with creative thinking was a workshop conducted by the accelerator named “creativity meets aviation”.

This event triggered his tendency towards innovative as well as creative thinking and encouraged him to collaborate with the BizLab. The participant strongly indicated a need for change of the engineering perspective to enhance creative thinking and innovative approaches. Further, he recognized that entrepreneurial thinking involves selling a product or service within a short timeframe. He emphasized that this not only holds true for entrepreneurs, it is particularly true for employees at Airbus who want to sell ideas to their supervisors and get approval for time and resources. His explanations lead to the fact that it seemed challenging for him to pitch an idea and convince an audience in such a short time.

The participant strongly emphasized the different working mentalities when he claimed: “I was completely excited about the fact that for the first time I found people among me who did not think about problems in the first place. You need a positive environment to foster new ideas” (P1, personal communication, January 4, 2017). Even though his previous opinion and understanding on such an approach indicated strong disagreement, the workshop changed his mind about self-awareness and the methods conducted. For him, it has a double-sided effect:

He is both able to extend his knowledge and skills and can share this attitudes with his coworkers.

Next to the technical learning, a collaboration workshop called “visual thinking”, where the division visualized their systems and structures, enhanced methodical learning that he categorized as “really helpful” for structuring problems. He feels that the entire atmosphere has changed ever since his team collaborated with the accelerator.

Altogether, the respondent has a very positive impression of the accelerator program. Since he works at Airbus for almost 17 years, he identified a need for change and break through established barriers. During their collaboration, he felt the entrepreneurial spirit and the different approach on how to solve problems and foster creativity. He could not imagine how this knowledge could be taught and highlighted the overall experience and atmosphere. In contrast, he believes that start-ups struggle because they cannot draw from experience but on the other hand are therefore forced to try new things in a new way. As a result, this is exactly what Airbus can learn from their accelerator. Finally, the collaboration increased his knowledge and awareness of the start-up industry and enhanced both his methodical as well as technical learning.

Participant 2

P2 started his Airbus career in Saint-Nazaire, France. Meanwhile, he holds a management position and is responsible for the final assembly line production of the Airbus A380. His engineering background forced him to deal with innovative concepts and creativity management as Airbus is concerned with on-time, on-quality as well as on-cost delivery.

Nowadays, his most important responsibility with regard to change and development is to stay profitable, even though Airbus is reducing the rates for the airplane model. Therefore, efficiency increase and optimization of processes encouraged him for the approach of not only dealing with the innovation department, but also to contact the BizLab. Despite other participants, he not only places many hopes into his units collaboration with the BizLab, he even sets explicit expectations regarding methodical learning skills. He and his department want to be challenged, tickled and inspired by novel methods derived by an entrepreneurial attitude. His explanations lead to the fact that especially across divisions with a manufacturing nature, it is difficult to create a willingness for change, when you have five hierarchies including assembly line workers who are not interested in a changing movement.

Again, there is an environmental issue shaped by bureaucratic hierarchies, static structures and people without motivation for change.

Within the workshop, his division and the attendees proved the fact that people working on traditional production need to be mentored and taught in a different way than managers or executives. Back in France, they collaborated with an institute in Paris at Grand Ecole, where they figured that it is difficult for people to imagine something they do not know in the first place. The corporate accelerator might be the potential solution for people to overcome that challenge and start thinking out of the box. Unlike traditional coaching, he suggested a continuous mentorship for technical and methodical learning. Moreover, choosing the right people is crucial for sustainable change. In their last collaboration, employees from different hierarchy levels were mixed up. Even though people were skeptical, they learned about the different perspectives and responsibilities within their department. Nevertheless, the participant strongly believes that technical learning can be enhanced by the experimental environment of the BizLab. Altogether, he made the impression to be aware of issues and know what to improve and where to start. Learning sourced from the accelerator has a technical nature and choosing the right people for collaboration is a precondition for a learning impact. Yet, he feels that the BizLab has not been promoted sufficiently and emphasized “too less push” from the Airbus’ corporate accelerator.

Participant 3

P3 is responsible for the conformance area of Airbus. In fact, this includes the quality checks and assistance of factories, customers or assembly line. A representative of the BizLab encouraged him to establish topics and ideas around the production facility within the accelerator. In general, he stated that he is a strong supporter of the BizLab and believes in the idea. In the light of Airbus, integrating such a program sends a positive message to the internal as well as external environment and is subsequently beneficial for Airbus. However, he complains about Airbus as a bureaucratic, static and large enterprise including a lot of barriers that need to be overcome. He emphasized his frustration about their collaboration with a start-up called Synergeticon that is part of the cohort within the BizLab. In here, the successful integration of the start-up failed due to corporate barriers that could not be solved during their collaboration. As a result, he is skeptical about a successful execution of Airbus’s corporate accelerator because it is likely to always be challenging to overcome Airbus’s corporate barriers.

Next to his experience, he identified the need for an entrepreneurial mindset observed by the start-ups operational methods and procedures. He compared the different approaches in solving a typical problem. Unlike Airbus, start-ups directly start working and subsequently question the necessity of resources or the possibility of practical implementation. Although he claimed that Airbus strongly needs this type of mindset, it would also be sufficient to change and adapt the company’s structure and processes. His argumentation is based on the fact that Airbus’ main competitor had been Boeing for a long time. However, as the market has changed and competition is seriously increasing, the corporation needs to adapt onto the new environment. “If the accelerator is becoming accepted within the firm, the BizLab can be one of the major enabler for such a change” (P3, personal communication, January 16, 2017) He criticizes the production itself as a department where it seems significantly difficult to change established processes. As a result, although he supports the whole idea of the BizLab including its methods and concepts, he is skeptical about this transformation process, or as he states, is missing the imagination. Like P2, the participant complains about the BizLab’s recognition within Airbus and stated, that he knows about projects in Hamburg but has no idea what is going on in the other BizLab locations such as Toulouse or India.

Slowly, the similarities between the participants become visible. Employees are complaining about internal structures and processes and estimate potential barriers for an unrestricted collaboration with the BizLab. In either case, the participant is highly encouraged and motivated in collaborating and will support and trigger upcoming events.

Participant 4

P4 is also responsible for the quality conformance area, just on a management level. He explains their main tasks to be in the optimization of checking procedures and to subsequently increase the quality measures of delivery rates of airplanes. He emphasizes that due to paper based, as well as complicated quality procedures, it takes almost a quarter of the production time at the very end, to finish the entire process. Therefore, a member of the BizLab proposed that a start-up could offer a solution for visualizing the process and optimizing the work flow. That being announced, he claimed that he was enthusiastic about collaborating with the BizLab.

Whereas P3 could draw only a few conclusions, P4 was responsible for the direct collaboration with the start-up Synergeticon using the BizLab as a platform to search for their needed services. As a result, the technical learning had priority when they did the first pilot

with the start-up. He strongly stressed that he was looking for knowledge and solutions that are currently not available at Airbus. After a long technical explanation of the support by the start-up, they figured that the start-up already had the technical knowledge to improve several quality check procedures at Airbus. The BizLab provided the space where production could be partly simulated so that corporate, BizLab as well as start-up employees experienced a collaboration. As already mentioned, the support of the project failed, because they were not able to fully integrate the start-up into the project. In detail, Airbus claimed that process and data security could not be guaranteed and P4 claimed that he is too “small” to break down established structures to reach new regulations. Consequently, he as well as P3 disagreed and were not amused about the effort and willingness of Airbus to change existing structures.

Like other participants, he strongly criticized existing processes and structures at Airbus and felt that every new idea is blighted.

Nevertheless, the collaboration had a significantly strong impact on his work. First, if a new idea emerges, he first gets in touch with the BizLab instead of the IT department. Second, people in his department, including his supervisor, have started to realize the importance of improved quality measures and will further pursue their development. Third, the collaboration enforced his awareness that the BizLab constitutes a community where he can foster ideas, play around and talk to people with a different mindset. Ultimately, the project created some form of a network effect. It came to other department’s attention that the BizLab might symbolize a potential base, including their methods and start-up portfolio, to solve specific challenges. Interesting about this participant was the technical contribution of Synergeticon. Although technical learning played the primary role in this case, the participant was also surprised by their methodical approach of how to start solving problems. Altogether, indications are getting stronger how people experience and evaluate the role of Airbus’s corporate accelerator.

Participant 5

P5 is working at Airbus since 32 years. He is the Vice President (VC) and executive expert for cabin and cargo. Among Airbus, he is associated as the one to ask if the cabin of an airplane is involved. Although his official title is “engineer”, his role and activities fit the requirements of an architect. Therefore, he is highly concerned with innovative concepts as his previous role was called “innovation architect for cabins” where he registered around 160 patents for Airbus.

The participant’s enthusiasm and motivation about the BizLab was skeptical in the first place.

Due to his involvement in several innovation concepts, his first association was just another

“thing” to increase innovation at Airbus. However, over the time he experienced the flexible and flat hierarchy structure at the BizLab and got in touch with a start-up called “Retrolley”.

He was fascinated by their motivation and encouragement of trying to bring an idea one step further by taking a lot of risk, spending a lot of time and strongly believing in their idea. He quickly recognized, that risk-taking is one major issue that has to be established at Airbus.

Due to his career, he has gone through several restructuring procedures and implicated that the firm created a risk-averse attitude over the years. Consequently, he got inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit and activities experienced within the start-up environment. He also believes that it is helpful for corporate employees to be aware of how much time, money and risk external start-ups are taking for developing their idea. In contrast, the start-ups are able to experience a corporate environment including financial and spatial support. In fact, he believes that the BizLab will always be considered as the home port for their accelerated start-ups. This will establish a long-term and sustainable relationship with benefits for both institutions. In addition, he also mentioned the point that choosing the right people is crucial for learning. Especially the people who are emotionally attached to their projects but miss the methodical knowledge of selling it in the most appealing way get most out of the collaboration.

In general, P5 interpreted the BizLab with a more general view. As he dealed with innovative concepts for years, he is very interested in new methods, procedures and collaborations with start-ups. He got the general picture, that new ideas find and foster a company’s culture.

Combined, he truly believes that the BizLab is one of Airbus’ attempts to stay competitive, foster innovation and keep in touch with the overall movement of the start-up industry.

Participant 6

P6 is working at Airbus since 2002. He is working in the research department and is specialized in the field of composite research. As of 2011, he is concerned with the industrialization of new composites developed for the aviation industry. His initial contact was enabled through the Airbus Corporate Innovation department that brought a topic he was working on to the BizLab. His role is characterized as a project manager to comprehensively collaborate with the BizLab located in Toulouse. His project involves the industrialization and its implementation according to the emergence of entirely new technologies. For him, the

BizLab fulfills two major roles: On the one hand, it provides access to external projects and innovations in order to participate in agile working procedures conducted by external companies. This agility is practically difficult to establish in an organization with almost 150.000 employees. On the other hand, it supports the release of bringing internally developed technologies to the outside market.

Despite the bottom up approach followed by the Airbus Group, the BizLab enables ideas and innovations to be approached on a top down basis. P6 claimed, that this leverage constitutes a new opportunity for Airbus to give ideas and concepts chances for a sustainable development.

Conversely, P6 believes that organizational structures limit the decisional power of start-ups and their collaboration with corporate employees. In fact, even though internal collaboration with the BizLab is desired, project budgets and higher hierarchy levels limit unrestricted thoughts and actions and predetermines the scope for operations. He is the first participant who went into more detail about the BizLab’s location. He figured that the decision of keeping the BizLab outside of the factory premises but still in a close distance, is crucial for overcoming the bureaucratic structures and foster entrepreneurial thinking and activity. With regard to the research department, he outlined that a lot of researchers are struggling with the transition of turning concepts that have been produced theoretically into practical, industrial knowledge. In consequence, he strongly agrees that the BizLab constitutes a potential enabler for overcoming that obstacle.

Altogether, he evaluates the Airbus’ corporate accelerator as a complementary department for the business development. However, he identifies the potential of collaborating with start-ups and the BizLab environment fosters creative thinking and flexible decision-making due to unbureaucratic procedures of for example the booking of conference rooms, conducting of workshops or trainings. Moreover, he criticizes decision paths and budget restrictions that still limit an unrestricted collaboration between start-ups and corporates. He suggests offering fixed budgets including certain time periods that are distributed internally as soon as the management is convinced of a potential project to flourish under the roof of the accelerator.

The BizLab could solve the current dilemma of losing internally developed innovations that usually disappear while trying to be realized. Airbus creates unnecessary costs because they buy-in marketable solutions but should rather focus on developing them internally. Even though a lot of fine tuning adjustments have to be accomplished, the BizLab could bridge the gap between internally developed concepts and feasible innovations through external start-up procedures.