"Working with startups in a structured manner enables us to be agile and fast."

Forest intelligence pilot

Calling for world-leading solutions under three themes - Virtual Forest; Smart Sales & Purchase, and; Information Flow & Market Intelligence - Stora Enso met with four selected startups over three days in downtown Helsinki last year. Competing with more than 200 startup applicants from 34 countries, the lucky four got to work on their value propositions together with decision makers and experts from Stora Enso.

One of them was the Lisbon based planet intelligence startup 20tree.ai, for which those initial value proposition days turned out to be a defining moment and the beginning of an exciting long-term collaboration with Stora Enso.

Their first joint pilot would come to focus on ‘evaluating the opportunities in using AI powered satellite imaginary to make forest insights remotely’, and the rest is - as they say - history.

A 700 year-old and a startup

"Open innovation is a great tool for building something new faster by integrating existing solutions instead of creating them yourself. This is also one of the reasons why our startup partners are quite often in the scaleup phase,” Antti Vuolli, Head of New Digital Businesses at Stora Enso explains.

From a startup perspective, what initially sparked interest in Combient Foundry was the opportunity to work side-by-side with a global industry leader, Indra den Bakker, Co-founder and Deep Learning Engineer at 20tree.ai explains:

“Piloting a solution with a global company, working together towards a financially sound new service and lasting partnership, as well as focusing on direct value for both the startup and the client. That’s what made us apply.”

20tree.ai is part of the incubator Startup Lisboa as well as Techstars Lisbon Accelerator, which they say is quite different to Combient Foundry.

“The two programs have proven to be complementary. With Foundry, we co-create our service together with Stora Enso. This customer-focused approach makes the Venture Client Cycle unique. When you can address a real and concrete business need for the customer, there’s no hesitation in doing so,” says Indra den Bakker.

“Working with a concrete business case has made it possible to develop an MVP with direct feedback from Stora Enso’s decision-makers. This all done in 9 weeks, from first introduction to final presentation. Adding to that, we’ve received helpful coaching along the way, validating the scope of our pilot and shaping our service model”, Indra den Bakker continues.

Aligning on expectations and smoothening out workflows has proven to be key.

Still, a partnership between a young startup and a 700 years old forestry company certainly is not something that ‘just happens’. Stora Enso is working actively to create platforms for these types of collaboration. Besides their active engagement in co-developing foundry, Stora Enso is also running their own Accelerator program.

“Working with startups in a structured manner enables us to be agile and fast. Focus is on value creation and use of modern ways of working which in the case meant 20tree.ai was able to spend most of the pilot delivery time outside of Helsinki,” says Antti Vuolli.

Future of wood

20tree.ai is on their way to become the standard in planet intelligence, with a roadmap including more features related to forestry, soil and water. Stora Enso and 20tree.ai have continued their business development together after ticking the box of a first purchase order back in 2018.

“We are currently working on a very interesting service concept, and will soon be able to tell you more about our collaboration. It is always a pleasure to see a young startup take brave and giant leaps towards global business. When we met 20tree.ai, they had just started their entrepreneurial journey and today, they are working with global customers and with a vast array of interesting products and services,” says Antti Vuolli.

Future of Foundry

Stora Enso have so far participated in three of Combient Foundry’s venture client cycles, and “every cycle has been better than the previous one” according to Antti Vuolli. As more companies from the Combient network are engaging in the program - currently Husqvarna Group, KONE, Epiroc, Scania and Fazer alongside Stora Enso - more visibility and interest is shown from the global startup ecosystem too.

“We are collaborating very closely with the Combient Foundry team as well as the other five companies. When it comes to 20tree.ai, we have recommended them to several other companies in the network, and from what we have heard, they have found several new business opportunities from it,” says Antti Vuolli.

As of today, Combient Foundry have developed cases with five companies representing five different industries. Projects have taken off, and more importantly, valuable learnings from each cycle have been shared across the network - reaching beyond the forerunning five. And building on the success of last year’s presence at Slush (the world’s leading startup conference in Helsinki), 2019 efforts are set to be even greater.

"For the future, we would like to see Combient Foundry to be the best open innovation vehicle in the world – a well known and global platform for collaboration between startups and big corporations,” Antti Vuolli at Stora Enso concludes.

Crunching numbers, Combient Foundry

• 6 big companies
• 95 startup purchase orders
• €15M revenue from scaled projects
• Startups from 24 countries

Interested in joining? combientfoundry.com

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