ACCELERATOR INNOVATION AT TECHNISCHE WERKE LUDWIGSHAFEN
Where Ideas
Learn to Swim
A public utility reinvents itself: Technische Werke Ludwigshafen takes a courageous path of transformation to becoming a nationwide energy service provider. The company has launched an accelerator program in which startups work on the business fields of tomorrow, housed in a former swimming pool building.
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The venue could hardly be more symbolic: It’s where former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl used to sweat in the sauna on Saturdays, and perhaps where he conceived a new political world order with guests of state such as Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev – and it’s now home to startups developing future-oriented business ideas. The goal is that the resulting innovations refresh the core business of Technische Werke Ludwigshafen (TWL), an energy provider headquartered in Ludwigshafen, an industrial city on the Rhine. At the end of 2016, the company converted the Hallenbad Nord former municipal swimming pool – also the location of the chancellor’s sauna, steeped in history – to form the Freischwimmer (free swimmers) Innovation Center. The center has attracted many teams of founders since it opened last summer. Startups have traveled from throughout Germany to deliver pitches in the empty swimming pool that has been converted into a presentation space, hoping to be recruited to the accelerator program. Working on the business of tomorrowTWL landed a coup with “Freischwimmer” – not only because the listed swimming pool building from the 1950s offers a wonderfully inspiring atmosphere for innovation work, but also because the “Freischwimmer” idea is unique in the public utilities sector. This long-established supply company created an accelerator program with the intention of using innovation to advance the Group’s growth in two respects: First, the entity supports the formation of businesses in the energy industry and integrates them into the company’s ecosystem. At the same time, a startup owned by the Group works on the future in “Freischwimmer”. It is an in-house ideas forge, developing the business areas of tomorrow, detached from day-to-day operations. “We recognized back in 2010 that our business model as a traditional, regional supply company was no longer working,” comments Dr. Hans-Heinrich Kleuker, Commercial Director of TWL. “We then kicked-off a fundamental transformation of our organization, with the objective of becoming a nationwide energy service provider by 2020. Freischwimmer is an important milestone on this journey.” |