About
EDF Luminus founded in 1946, is the second-largest energy provider in Belgium. EDF Luminus produces and distributes electricity.
The idea behind bCheck
One of the top players in the energy sector, EDF Luminus recognized the need to stimulate innovation and intrapreneurship within the organization. With that thought, they established their internal innovation incubator #next.
Seppe de sever with his colleague became a part of the first corporate venture project of EDF Luminus. They together developed bCheck, a device that provides immediate energy efficiency improvements on electricity installments like boilers and heat pumps. It uses IoT technology and artificial intelligence to monitor their operation and efficiency. The collected data can be read and interpreted using AI and the system is also able to detect when an installation will break down so that problems can be solved before they occur.
With bCheck, energy savings of up to 30% has been detected.
When interviewed, here’s what Seppe has to say about the whole experience.
“They gave us a laptop, they gave us a credit card with a few thousand euros on it, and they just said: okay, test it, validate the idea, and go for it! We see everybody is learning: we are learning, EDF Luminus is learning, on how to do it quicker and better.”– Seppe de Sever
This is one among the numerous examples of intrapreneurship programs that resulted in ideas that changed the fortunes of organizations. Be it BASF’s successful intrapreneurship program Chemovator, ITC’s e-choupal initiative, Nitin Prajanpe’s experiments at Hindustan Unilever, or Deutsche Telekom’s UQBATE program.
If Entrepreneurship was the word of the last few decades, Embracing Intrapreneurship is the new winning formula for organizations to thrive and get a step ahead of the competition for the coming future. Organizations ought to recognize intrapreneurs within them and give them a stage to share and deploy their ideas. In the future, it is employee-driven innovation that will help improve the innovation potential of organizations, and not just management-driven initiatives.
Want help getting employee ideas? Getting hands on an idea management platform is the right place to start. Need help finding the right software for your organization’s needs? This listicle should help – List of best idea management software.
