DEL20: ecosystem for experimentation with innovative technology

Imagine if you could innovate freely without having to worry about competition, budgets or the risk of failure. What project would you pursue? What could you achieve? With DEL20, delaware assembles the brightest minds from the most forward-thinking companies and provides space for them to experiment with new ideas, share knowledge, and shape tomorrow’s businesses.

Due to numerous barriers, an estimated 80% of innovation projects don’t result in any valuable learnings, either positive or negative. With the DEL20 innovation ecosystem, delaware aims to overcome these obstacles.

By participating in a series of events, the DEL20 community selects the 4 most innovative experiments every year among numerous submissions. Through experimentation with emerging technology and data innovation, business applications are tested and evaluated over the course of a year. During this time, delaware offers business expertise, technical skills and 25 days of free consultancy for each innovation experiment. Valuable learnings from each project are shared with the community.

The selection process is conducted through voting and gamification amongst the members of the ecosystem and based on their personal judgment of the potential business case and the innovation value it brings to the whole group.

Over the last few years, several value-adding projects were developed within the DEL20 framework:

• Cartamundi optimizes the use of SAP with ‘collaborative filtering’.
• La Lorraine Bakery Group improved sales by 5% thanks to a new sales prediction model.
• De Watergroep significantly reduces losses through AI-powered leak detection.
• BekaertDeslee deploys RPA to streamline the administration behind its customer experiences.

DEL20’s not-so-secret sauce? The golden triangle of innovation.

• DEL20 member companies provide the real-life cases in a business context.
• delaware runs the innovation ecosystem and adds technology and business acumen.
• The community evaluates if digital technology contributes to the resolution of tangible problems.

The goal of DEL20 is to generate as much value as possible for all parties involved. “For DEL20 members, every project offers value either in the form of new insights or real-world optimization,” explains Steven Lenaerts, partner at delaware. “At the same time, delaware learns a lot about market needs and what keeps our clients awake at night, so we can adapt our offering accordingly. And finally, thanks to its democratic selection process, the broader DEL20 community gains a lot from each experiment as well, as it provides answers to shared challenges, even across industries. More often than not, this leads to an interesting cross-polination where companies in different sectors can learn from each other.”