“Smart cities in Europe: Financing the commercialisation of smart city technology” - Interview with Arif Hatip

This summer, OC released the first in a series of white papers on smart cities, “Smart cities in Europe: Financing the commercialisation of smart city technology”. We, in collaboration with VB Research, interviewed smart cities champions and experts,  including Arif Hatip, General Manager & Founder of BeYond (Business Incubator of Robert Bosch).

On
integrating technology developed by smaller companies into their solution:

We work with any kind of companies: large groups,
mid-cap companies, small ventures and start ups. In the past, if you look at the
entertainment system in a car it consisted of the music and later the
navigation system, that’s it. Today it’s a multitude of functions and you
cannot come up with all of the functions yourself as a tier one supplier, and
it doesn’t make much sense to do so. You don’t need to come up with a web search
if there is already a globally well accepted web search. You have to take into
account that the end user is using some services on his smart phone, in his
living room, etc. Therefore consumers are used to these services during the
whole day, so why use other services with other technologies in the car?

Car manufacturers expect us to be able to integrate besides
complex driver assistance functions also services from large third-party companies
or from smaller startups into our automotive infotainment systems. Small companies
might, for example, provide some parking function that enables you to identify
vacant parking spaces in real time. We must be able to take that cloud service and
integrate it into the infotainment system and make it conveniently usable (e.g.
routing of the navigation).

On extent
to which at Bosch Car Multimedia encourages innovation by smaller
companies:

We facilitate innovation amongst smaller companies in
many ways. At a very basic level we pass a specification to potential suppliers
and ask them to come up with a solution. We also run short hackathons where we
ask companies to come in and develop solutions that can be integrated into our
car infotainments systems. Furthermore, we have started collaborating with
external accelerators around the world in order to enhance our scouting of
promising start ups on the one hand, but also to offer support to relevant
small and new ventures. Venture companies are way more agile and quick than
established automotive companies, so we need to find innovative ways to collaborate
more closely with start-ups and support them by generating an exchange with
regard to capabilities vs experiences.   

On the
advantages for smaller companies:

Technologies and business models are so diverse in
these times, the business models are changing so fast, that you cannot bring up
all of the promising innovations and business ideas yourself. Its just a matter
of fact, not all smart people and innovative ideas can be in your organization
or are in any big organization at all. Smaller companies or new start ups can
act with a maximum of speed and flexibility in order to identify and exploit
opportunities. Many start ups change or at least adapt their business models
during first years according to lessons they learn down the road. Thus,
“Flexibility” is also in this context a valuable asset.