The fourth edition of the Sacyr iChallenges program has confirmed the international projection of the open innovation program from the infrastructures and services firm. Despite having been a difficult year for all agents of the innovation ecosystem, Sacyr iChallenges has closed the identifying solutions phase with a total of 245 proposals for the four challenges issued by the company in this call.
The company has received ideas from 25 countries: Spain, the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Israel, Germany, Portugal, or Perú, among others.
“One year more we have had an excellent reception among the international innovation ecosystem, which indicates an exponential evolution in the program’s notoriety worldwide. At Sacyr, we especially value the efforts of the innovation community to adapt their solutions to the challenges we issue in these complicated times we are going through”, indicates Marta Gil, General Manager of Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainability of Sacyr.
Sacyr iChallenges is one of Sacyr’s pillars of innovation and digital transformation, based on the bet on teamwork and co-creation with the innovation ecosystem internationally.
With this open innovation program, Sacyr looks for travel companions with whom to promote sustainable solutions that help improve the quality of life of citizens by improved infrastructures and services.
Sustainability
In this fourth edition of the program, the company has put the center on promoting sustainability, a key pillar of its 2021-2025 Sustainable Sacyr Action Plan. With this plan, Sacyr commits to fighting against climate change with a significant increase in innovation investment to protect the environment.
The challenges of this fourth edition of Sacyr iChallenges are focused on sustainability. These challenges answer to four needs of the company’s business units: generation of clean energy, measuring Sacyr’s environmental impact, more energetically efficient Universities, and optimizing stock control operations.
Program, key dates, and selection criteria
Firstly, a committee of experts formed by managerial roles from the different business units of Sacyr will evaluate all the received proposals. Then, they will select those that offer the most innovative, efficient, and scalable solutions, technology, or new business models to solve the issued challenges. Lastly, the company will communicate, by the end of September 2021, the proposals that best tackled each of the challenges.
The chosen solutions will work jointly mixed teams made up of external agents and Sacyr business experts to continue developing their solutions and project proposals. The goal is to continue developing their projects to materialize them in a pilot and later integrate them. Likewise, the sponsors of these challenges, managers from Sacyr's different business areas, will act as mentors to these projects to help the development of each pilot.
At Sacyr Innovation Summit, an event that will take place at Sacyr’s corporate headquarters in Madrid, the selected innovation agents will publicly present their solution initiatives to the challenges issued by the company.
Furthermore, the Sacyr Foundation will recognize, as part of the 11th edition of the Sacyr Innovation Awards, some of the initiatives submitted by the innovating community as part of the Sacyr iChallenges program.
