Abstract
Enel is seeking creative ideas or approaches to provide customized electricity and gas products and/or services and to satisfy individual customer’s needs in order to provide a unique value with respect to diversity and inclusion. Desirable approaches can, but are not limited to, leverage on digital disruptions or new technologies (e.g. smart meters), automate Enel processes, enhance flexibility of current commercial portfolio, etc. Any solution with a compelling business justification will be considered.
This is an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution.
Overview
The Energy market, similarly to other industries, is experiencing a change whereby value propositions place customers in the centre of every product or service. Further to that, diversity and inclusion regardless of age, disability, nationality or any other socio-cultural aspect, are at the centre of preoccupations in industry, and more specifically to Enel.
Mass Customization is a concept that Enel wants to leverage in order to succeed in this change. This concept is defined as the process of delivering wide-market products and services which are personalized to satisfy the needs of specific customer segments.
Hence, in this Challenge, Enel is seeking creative ideas or approaches to provide customized electricity and gas products and/or services to satisfy individual customer’s needs whilst:
- Guaranteeing and enhancing inclusion of all customers by taking into account their diversity (e.g. gender, age, disability, nationality and other types of personal, social and cultural diversity),
- Improving the digitalization, automatization and flexibility of Enel processes and commercial portfolio
This Challenge provides contribution to the following Sustainable Development Goals:
- SDG 7 - Affordable and clean energy
- SDG 10 - Reduce inequalities
Submissions will include a detailed description of the proposed solution and any supporting information with regards to its feasibility and economics.
For questions about the challenge and your proposal you can contact EnelOpenInnovabilityChallenges@innocentive.com
Description
BACKGROUND
The implications of value shifting to customers are significant and have driven transformations in traditional industries, such as retail, automotive, banking etc. The energy industry is also entering this movement in order to achieve customer-centric value propositions.
The key to success in this movement is implementing the conceptual idea of mass customization. As a pioneering gas and electricity distribution company, Enel believes that this concept can help enhance customer experience, drive customer loyalty, reduce the churn rate, strengthen brand awareness, and bring in new customers to the business. Further to that, diversity and inclusion regardless of age, disability, nationality or any other socio-cultural aspect, are at the centre of preoccupations to Enel.
Mass customization allows a specific customer segment to receive customized services or products whilst maintaining the capacity to deliver in mass scale. The concept integrates the economies of scale and customer centricity together in order to provide flexibility and personalization of custom-made solutions to satisfy the customer needs while exploiting cost advantages. This concept is well-established and demonstrated in the automobile industry, where car manufacturers produce personalized vehicles for their customers in aspects of colour, electronics extras, extra leg rooms, and other adjustable features while keeping these varieties in streamlined manufacturing processes. As a more customer-centricity driven company, Enel also wants to use this concept as a lever to provide a shared as well as unique value to its electricity and gas market customers.
THE CHALLENGE
Hence, in this Challenge, Enel is seeking creative ideas or approaches to provide customized electricity and gas products and/or services to satisfy individual customer’s needs whilst:
- Guaranteeing and enhancing inclusion of all customers by taking into account their diversity (e.g. gender, age, disability, nationality and other types of personal, social and cultural diversity),
- Improving the digitalization, automatization and flexibility of Enel processes and commercial portfolio
Desirable approaches can, but not limited to, leverage on digital disruptions or new technologies (e.g. smart meters), generate and/or extracting value from data collected and managed, etc. Any solution with a compelling business justification will be considered.
Submissions must have the following qualities:
- Customized services or products to adapt a residential customer’s needs
- It is inclusive and takes all demographics and diversity into consideration (gender, age, disability, nationality and other types of personal, social and cultural diversity)
- Brings additional value to Enel and its residential customers by, but not limited to, improving the digitalization, automatization and flexibility of Enel processes and commercial portfolio
- Feasible and easy enough to implement
PROJECT DELIVERABLES
The submitted proposal should be a maximum of 10 pages and include the following:
- Rationale for the proposed concept and a detailed explanation of its novelty and feasibility highlighting the value for inclusion and forms of diversity covered
- Key steps for commercializing the solution (e.g. resources, time frame, metrics (and insights with respect to any known limitations)
- Any formats of additional materials that are useful to support and explain the proposed solution
The proposal should not include any personal identifying information (name, username, company, address, phone, email, personal website, resume, etc.) or any information the Solvers may consider as their Intellectual Property they do not want to share.
Challenge rules
This is an Ideation Challenge, which has the following unique features:
- There is a guaranteed award. The awards will be paid to the best submission(s) as solely determined by the Seeker. The total payout will be $20,000, with at least one award being no smaller than $10,000 and no award being smaller than $2,500.
- The Solvers are not required to transfer exclusive intellectual property rights to the Seeker. Rather, by submitting a proposal, the Solver grants to the Seeker a royalty-free, perpetual, and non-exclusive license to use any information included in this proposal, including for promotional purposes.
Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM (CET) on June 15, 2019.
Late submissions will not be considered.
Specific regulation in the CSA attached
What happens next?
After the Challenge deadline, the Seeker will complete the review process and make a decision with regards to the Winning Solution(s). All Solvers that submit a proposal will be notified on the status of their submissions; however, no detailed evaluation of individual submissions will be provided.
ABOUT INNOCENTIVE
InnoCentive collaborates with Enel to manage this challenge.
InnoCentive is the global innovation marketplace where creative minds solve some of the world's most important problems for cash awards up to $1 million. Commercial, governmental and humanitarian organizations engage with InnoCentive to solve problems that can impact humankind in areas ranging from the environment to medical advancements.