Accelerating innovation together
About SAP Co-Innovation Lab
Alongside SAP’s product strategy and road map, partner innovation is a key pillar in our strategy to enable organisations to become intelligent enterprises. Using the technical foundation provided by SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), we work together with our partners to extend and integrate SAP applications to meet unique organisational needs and digitalise business processes.
For more than 15 years, SAP Co-Innovation Lab has been a bridge between SAP and our innovative ecosystem. We help our partners convert ideas for solutions for intelligent enterprises into working prototypes and from there to market-ready solutions.
From 13 worldwide locations, SAP Co-Innovation Lab is delivering a new, accelerated innovation experience for SAP partners in line with our Next-Generation Partnering initiative. One of our most prominent projects is the Hack2Build initiative to support rapid prototyping, use-case exploration, and technology adoption.
Hack2Build – Beyond a Hackathon
The pandemic has upended the way we engage with our innovation ecosystem. SAP Co-Innovation Lab has defined new ways to support the full spectrum of co-innovation. We have introduced a new prototype-to-value approach, called Hack2Build.
The initiative is designed with partners’ current needs in mind. We want to support innovation in meaningful ways so that, together with our partners, we are able to help customers transition to the cloud in a defined manner.
Hack2Build is a modern and results-driven format that takes the idea of a traditional hackathon one step further. The focus moves from strengthening and showcasing tech savviness in a particular domain toward delivering functioning solution prototypes with definite customer value.
The uniqueness of our approach lies in the combination of the power and productivity of a highly collaborative, intense hackathon paired with follow-up activities focusing on solution completion and commercialization. In this way, we complete the full cycle from solution idea to delivery.
Sprint1 – Agility in a vertical market
Partners that wish to develop and commercialize solutions that address a specific industry or a strategic theme can benefit from the collaboration and guidance of SAP experts in our high-touch initiative called Sprint1.
Based on carefully curated use cases, selected partners can work virtually with a tailor-made, multidisciplinary team from SAP. This team elaborates upon future solutions with an objective to optimise their architecture and make them even more attractive for the targeted markets. Subsequently, partner teams can develop a minimum viable product during an intensive prototyping phase and demonstrate it to a panel of SAP stakeholders.
Together, partner and SAP stakeholders can jointly define a plan that may include technical coaching and commercialization advice to bring the solution to market.
Aligned with agile scrum methodology, teams break their work into goals that can be completed within short time iterations called sprints. Explore Sprint1 today to realise your use case in a minimum viable product.
One-to-One Prototyping – Ideas Become Reality
Key benefits of this service include:
- Valuable feedback on your solution use case from SAP’s perspective
- Intense, tailored coaching based on your requirements
- A technology-wise representative prototype up and running to show to your customers within seven days
- Coaching from the prototype stage to a solution ready for market
- A clear view on your way forward with SAP with regard to go to market
- Ability to grow your network at SAP significantly for your future endeavors
Coming from Hack2Build or having been inspired by our Partner Innovation Days or other offerings from the Partner Ecosystem Success group, SAP Co-Innovation Lab offers realisation coaching as a service for SAP partners. Connect with the team from SAP Co-Innovation Lab and chosen SAP experts for coaching on the realisation of your solution idea that implements a concrete use case and has significant potential to be implemented by customers. Prerequisites for this service are that your envisioned solution would extend SAP’s industry cloud solutions or other cross-industry cloud solutions from SAP leveraging SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and that you have analysed its market potential as a base for a solid business case.
SAP Co-Innovation Lab will then involve relevant stakeholders at SAP to evaluate technical feasibility and business viability. Based on the decision of the involved SAP stakeholders and based on available capacity, you may be accepted and thus become eligible for this service. The service consists of three pillars: technical architecture coaching as foundation, prototyping support, if seen as required, and the actual realisation coaching during the build phase of your solution. If you are an active, full SAP partner beyond the Open Ecosystem level, simply request this service using the Partner Benefits Catalog. If you are not yet that far on your partner journey with SAP, simply reach out to us directly at coil@sap.com and we will see what’s needed for you to progress with your solution idea.
Co-Innovation Project Highlights
Asia Pacific Japan partner innovations with SAP Signavio solutions
Transforming business processes using SAP Signavio solutions is key to unlocking business value for our customers. A Hack2Build event with partners from Asia Pacific Japan, utilising SAP Signavio solutions and SAP Business Technology Platform, yielded eight great innovations that take this potential even further.
Rapid innovation with Hack2Build in Africa
SAP Co-Innovation Lab concluded its Hack2Build event for African partner companies, with consulting firm Bayajula Services emerging as the overall winner. Eight partner expert teams developed their solution prototypes within seven days, showcasing Africa innovation at its best.
Hack4One with SAP partner Sapphire Systems
Hack4One harnesses the intensity of Hack2Build and Sprint1 events on the innovative power of one single partner with multiple teams. Find out how partner Sapphire Systems piloted this new approach together with SAP Co-Innovation Lab.
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