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JOL

Now more than ever the attitude to “Open Innovation” and contamination with other industries can revolutionise the life of companies and the Public Administration with tangible effects on the everyday life of citizens. Thanks to new mobile technologies and social networks the push for bottom-up changes has greatly increased.

Arising from intuition on open innovation, the JOLs are laboratories of research and innovation created by Telecom Italia within universities, the result of collaborations and agreements in specific fields of scientific or technological interest. Active since 2012, they are an important vehicle for spreading ideas between the academic and business worlds.

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Scenario

The role of innovation is ever more crucial for the growth, performance and sustainable renewal of companies, in terms of the transfer of advanced technologies to the market, systematic product and service improvement, radical changes to business and the rules of the game. The distinctive factors of competitiveness, particularly in periods of financial and industrial crisis, are increasingly tied to how able a company is to innovate and invest in innovation. In this new context, the JOLs play a key role. With the “company on campus” model, they encourage a natural osmosis between the academic and industrial worlds, in which the co-design and co-development of innovative solutions are not just the result of a process but its fundamental reason for existing.

Milestones & performance

2015

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JOL in 2015

8 JOL
5 Italian universities of excellence
10 foreign universities in partnership
1.6 million euros of measured social value

JOLs in the three-year period 2013-2015

27 patents filed
30 collaborations with international universities and research centres
7 million euros of funding from European projects for TIM and the universities

Strategy

Telecom Italia has launched this innovative cooperation model within the Innovation & Industry Relations department, promoting the development of different JOLs across the country, located within Italian universities. In this context, universities play an outreach role, promoting the direct application, enhancement and use of knowledge to contribute to the social, cultural and economic development of society.

With the JOLs, Telecom Italia has anticipated the Open Innovation paradigm, in which new ideas can come from multiple sources, not always from within conventional organisational structures. Direct and ongoing contamination with an expanded ecosystem of actors encourages the openness of the value creation process, which becomes an essential vehicle for developing entrepreneurship, and in turn generates opportunities for the Company.

The multidisciplinary nature of the partnerships has also promoted an exchange of knowledge and approaches that create new business opportunities.

Thanks to the results achieved, the participation and involvement of the ecosystem created, the JOL project has been renewed for the 2016-2018 period, with plans to extend it to three new Italian universities. In the last three-year period (2013-2015), Telecom Italia achieved significant results with the JOLs in six important areas:

market proposition: over 10 innovative ideas which were transformed in the JOLs into mature business propositions and commercial opportunities;
financials: over 5 million euros of funding for Telecom Italia, 1.6 million euros of funding by the Company for the university ecosystem with which the JOLs work;
knowledge: 27 patents filed, 4 patents filed with MPEG standardisation body, 1 patent undergoing SpinUp; international footprint: collaboration with over 30 centres of excellence and universities abroad; over 15 nationalities in the team making up the JOLs;
way of working: exchange of new working methods applied to innovation to improve internal skills within the Company;
brand reputation: over 250 papers, more than 20 events, 40 training seminars at JOLs, over 30 articles a month in JOL blogs, 2 Big Data Challenges involving over 1,100 people, 650 international teams and over 40 university teams.

Methodology

The Social Value consists of the following:

450,000 euros invested in material for the JOL programme
960.000 euros invested in research projects among the universities involved in the JOL programme
200.000 euros invested in structures for the JOL programme

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