rready isn’t your first time founding a start-up, how did you begin your career as an entrepreneur?
As a student, I founded a video job platform. This was right around the time Youtube became popular and the idea was that a video CV would improve recruitment processes. It didn’t work out. It was the wrong tech and we were not experienced enough. I then joined a bank and worked for three years as an analyst but did not find it fulfilling. After an internship with Namics, a web agency that specializes in digital transformation, my next venture was creating tailor-made suits. I was flying to Asia to meet with tailors in Hong Kong and Vietnam while in parallel undertaking my Masters in Entrepreneurship at HSG. After graduating, I joined deindeal.ch, one of the hottest start-ups in Switzerland at the time. Deindeal was acquired by Ringier and became the number one shopping platform in Swiss off-price e-commerce. Following a year off in Australia I joined Swisscom’s innovation centre, the Pirate’s hub, working in corporate innovation.

How did your experience as a founder serve you in the field of corporate innovation?
The startup mindset of just getting things done and the approach of asking for forgiveness rather than permission helped me a lot. Using the Kickbox mindset, I always focussed on gathering enough evidence to show the potential of an idea. It is also important to kill ideas very early in the process. I applied this when starting Kickbox as a small pilot to gather enough data points to get funding to implement the program at a larger scale at Swisscom.

I always focussed on gathering enough evidence to show the potential of an idea.

What is rready?
rready offers a SaaS product to enable large enterprises to start, manage, and automate a Kickbox program. The Kickbox methodology is a widely known innovation framework that we developed further and created our online intrapreneurship platform. Intrapreneurs are employees of large companies who act as entrepreneurs to create valuable business cases for their companies. Google’s “20% policy”, an initiative where employees are allowed to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google, was an inspiration for rready. Employees get a project budget, work time, an innovation booklet, and access to internal experts and external service providers. The rready program is organized into three phases. First, during the Redbox phase, the intrapreneur’s idea is validated. If the idea gets support by the business, the employee receives a Bluebox and enters the pilot phase. And finally, when there is proven real business potential behind the idea, the implementation phase, Goldbox, begins. The GoldBox can be an internal implementation or an external startup.

How do large corporates use rready?
Traditionally, corporate innovation is hierarchical and top-down. rready involves everyone in the innovation process. This sends a clear and very strong message that senior management believes in and values their employee’s ideas. Fostering innovation from the bottom-up stops “hip(p)os” (highest person’s opinion) from shutting down ideas before they even get started. One example I can think of is thingdust.com. Thingdust is a system of sensors that companies can use to monitor and analyze their office spaces 24/7. The idea for Thingdust came about during a RedBox phase for a different idea aimed at solving an intrapreneur’s personal pain point. The intrapreneur lived at the top of an apartment complex where the washing machines were located in the cellar. Tired of walking down countless flights of stairs only to find that their washing cycle had not yet finished. They designed a sensor that would notify them when the washing cycle was complete. However, it soon became apparent that the initial idea did not have B2C viability and the idea was limited by potential customer’s willingness to pay. Thanks to the rready validation process and various coaching sessions, the intrapreneur was able to pivot their idea, overcome the initial idea’s barrier, and create a B2B solution. Today, Thingdust’s clients include the likes of Roche and Nestle.

Can anyone be an intrapreneur?
The first phase of the rready program offers everyone a taste of intrapreneurship. Intrapreneurs are the CEOs of their own ideas. They are in charge of validating it so need to be passionate, driven, and a good salesperson. This means that certain people are more suited to the role. Some people dislike the high pace, and uncertainty of the work. This is where the marketplace comes in handy because intrapreneurs are able to use their project budget to receive support that can be tailored to their needs – for example, they get access to marketing experts, no-code developers or lean startup specialists. There is also coaching along the process to take out the fear and to help people to feel more relaxed about the intrapreneurship process. However, the intrapreneur himself is in charge of his idea and Kickbox is a lot about learning and applying lean startup methods to validate an own idea. Only 1% of an organization are intrapreneurs, 9% can act as supporters or sponsors, and the other 90% as consumers or readers. The important thing is that in this method of innovation there is no hierarchy. rready users are diverse because and evolve from all hierarchies are areas of an organization – everyone should be involved in innovation.

How will you be selling your solution to potential customers?
rready is a turnkey solution which means that it is ready to use. Our customers get everything out of the box which is a strong value proposition to large companies. On our platform, we provide innovation-as-a-service and license our software to our customers. This means we don’t do consulting, but we enable innovation by supporting intrapreneurs through the Kickbox method. In the future, we will have a multiproduct offering supporting large companies through continuous improvements, feedback loops, and start-up collaboration. All of these products will be ready to use on one platform. Just like Stripe is for payments, and Salesforce is for sales; our goal is to become the category leader in innovation.

Won’t intrapreneurs like their taste of entrepreneurship, take their idea, and leave to start their own company?
Every customer can decide if their idea should spin out or be kept internal. In some circumstances, it is better for the company to grow and scale as a spin-out. There is the option for the customer to take an ownership stake in the company. Some examples I can think of that spun-out of Swisscom are “help2type.ch”, which manufacture smartphone keyboards for individuals living with impaired vision. And “elementum.art”, a platform enabled by blockchain technology and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) which allow users to buy, trade, and exhibit art online. Whereas for example, Swisscom Asport, which offers increased access to sports content for fans, progressed through the rready program and was kept internal. We applied this method to our own project, the intrapreneurship program we have developed at Swisscom. rready is our own GoldBox that is becoming a startup now and I am super excited about the journey ahead.