7 minute read
Jaguar Land Rover Corporate Startup Studio
from The Funnel Israel #9: Special Edition - Open Innovation
by The Funnel | Corporate Innovation Magazine by Spyre Group
An interview with Tom Fawcett, Head of Product & Portfolio, Studio 107 at InMotion Ventures
Jaguar Land Rover Corporate Startup Studio
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How did you join the Inmotion Team? What was your path and background?
I joined InMotion from the in-house Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) strategy team, where I helped to shift the focus towards mobility, connectivity and electrification. Prior to this I held senior strategy, marketing and new business roles in consumer technology and FMCG. I started out as a management consultant working with Private Equity and Venture Capital clients in the consumer, tech and media sectors.
Can you share with us more about Inmotion’s vision and approach? What is the role of the 107 Studio in Inmotion’s structure?
InMotion is here to execute JLR’s strategy to be a leading premium mobility player, dedicated to delivering experiences people love for life. We help JLR answer two questions: what should our role be in the future and how do we engage with new and emerging customer segments. Given our parent company, we prioritise new products and services in the urban mobility and outdoor adventure space – this can be anything from an underlying data platform through to a customer facing service. We use VC investment, seed to series B, to understand the “innovation frontier” 5-10 years out. I work in Studio 107, our corporate startup studio. We explore the “industry frontier” 1-3 years out. We aim to pilot and then scale up revenue generating businesses that can deliver a differentiated solution that can command a price premium because it does something special. Studio 107 is a reference to our racing heritage. The 107% rule in Formula One means that you have to be within 107% of the fastest driver to qualify for the race. We are in the business of creating ventures that can compete at the highest levels.
Corporate Startup Studio is a new model for innovation development in large organizations.
How did you get to this model? What are its benefits over the regular corporate incubator model?
Our approach allows us to test and scale ventures from the ground up and be very receptive to their needs. We do a lot of the early stage conceptual work internally, usually coming up with the idea and then bringing a product owner in to lead the business as we gain confidence in the idea. I’d also say that we are more proactive on finding synergies with Jaguar Land Rover as well as between our portfolio businesses, whether that’s bringing data analytics expertise from Synaptiv, our connected CA data platform, into the fleet of rental vehicles in THE OUT, our on-demand rental business, or joining forces on business development. And our long term ambitions mean that we see ourselves as the launchpad for real businesses rather than being a research function.
Launching a business within an established corporation is a challenging task. Do you find that identifying product owners after the idea is ready and making them essentially into
“entrepreneurs-in-residence” is an effective approach? We find that our product owners are passionate and committed when they fully buy into the opportunity and it’s clear that they are the decision makers and can actually shape the business. It comes down to how we find the product owners and how we empower them.
Can you elaborate more about the innovation process you have at 107 Studio?
We have a multi-disciplinary team with experience from inside and outside the automotive and mobility sectors. It’s important to have different perspectives but we pride ourselves in taking a design led approach, using the double diamond model to get to the right customer experience. We have a core team of experts in customer insight, strategy, service design, product, UX/UI, data science, finance and operations all contributing. But most importantly we need the product owners to really take the lead. Finding and supporting these leaders is one of our most important jobs.
What decision making criteria do you apply when deciding whether to integrate developments into the car firm or look for strategic partners and external investments?
Our ventures are solving new problems that often require a broad mix of skills and infrastructure. We need to think hard about whether can we solve everything ourselves. Generally, that’s not possible and so we need to partner. For example, we are about to launch the initial trial phase for Havn, an allelectric chauffeur business in London. It’s far better to partner to bring in capabilities in EV charging, supply-demand management and hospitality. And external investment means that we all have skin in the game and so the solutions are much more pragmatic than in a typical corporate project. It is known that the most challenging part is to take a startup to scale. How do you help your ventures scale?
We help our ventures scale in three ways: first, we work hard to use Jaguar Land Rover’s scale, products, capabilities and relationships to provide growth opportunities. Second, we have a talented team that can step in and help at any stage. And thirdly we help the business access capital, where we can.
How does the investment process work at Inmotion
Ventures? What are the parameters for the investment decision in 107 Studio projects?
Each venture has to meet a clear customer pain point and command a price premium for doing this. We also look for synergy with the rest of the portfolio or with Jaguar Land Rover. As we progress, we have three key criteria that we put analytics behind. First, is this an investable business? Have we created something that would attract interest from third parties? Second, is it operationally excellent? Are customers more than happy and willing to pay a price premium for the service? And third, is it showing signs that it will be profitable in the mid-long term?
How do you manage your partnership with
Jaguar, your parent company? Do you have direct involvement of the executives in the development process? Are they able to influence your decisions and if so, then in what way?
We are 100% owned by Jaguar Land Rover but we are able to operate independently, giving us the freedom to work creatively to grow our businesses. That said, we are fully in line with Jaguar Land Rover’s strategy and we have three Jaguar Land Rover board members on our board. They’re involved in setting our strategy, inputting to and signing off on key decisions and unlocking opportunities
around Jaguar Land Rover. While we make sure that everything lines up with Jaguar Land Rover’s plans, we do avoid having to have a corporate sponsor for every venture – we don’t want our startups totally dependent on the corporate, though we do want them to benefit from it.
What would you say are the biggest challenges that 107 Studio faces today?
Awareness and understanding. Corporate start up studios are relatively new and the world of mobility is changing every month. We need to make sure it’s clear that our ventures are serious businesses aiming to get to £100m+ turnover and to make a transformational impact on Jaguar Land Rover. We also need the recognition that not every egg will be a bird, but that our failures can be as informative as our successes!
For all our community members - innovation managers - please suggest under what circumstances they need to turn to the corporate startup's studio approach and how they can convince their executives that this is the best model to adopt. Can you share your top innovation management tip with our community?
A studio approach is right if you operate in a rapidly changing industry like ours, but you are frustrated when you look out at all the innovation and still see many unmet customer needs and you have confidence that you can keep developing a pipeline of concepts. It’s especially good if you think that your corporate’s business and brands can help you launch ventures that have their own special angle. My top innovation tip is it’s all about the people. Success comes from getting your studio team and the product owners to click and to all be bought into the same vision and the same roadmap.
AboutInMotion
InMotion Ventures is Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund. We invest in earlystage technology companies that change the face of urban mobility, support an active outdoor lifestyle and deliver unique travel experiences. We are based in London and invest globally. At InMotion, we are investing in the future of transport, mobility and travel. Powered by Jaguar Land Rover, we are supporting entrepreneurs and innovators who change the way we move. InMotion’s mobility services arm, Studio 107, works closely with our parent company Jaguar Land Rover to build new services in the urban mobility sector. The name Studio 107 is a nod to the 107% rule in motorsport. In qualifying, drivers who fail to set a lap within 107% of the fastest qualifying time are not allowed to start. Our goal is to select the ideas that play to our strengths and develop them into winning businesses.
