Partnering for Innovation

Why would Bosch need a partner? It is a question Dr. Eva Budischin, introduced in this episode as Eva Mitterreiter, has heard from customers. The company has extensive expertise and a large network. Surely it can do everything itself?

Her answer is that breadth does not remove the value of complementary skills. In this Innovation Rockstars conversation, she and Jennifer Graf, Partner at digetiers, explain how they combine industrial and innovation experience with digital implementation capabilities. They also describe what makes that combination difficult: administrative processes, different interpretations of familiar terms and the temptation to claim more than a partnership can deliver.

Their examples move beyond the usual promise of collaboration. There are executives who discover they can build a prototype, teams who earn applause for stopping an idea, and an approach to consulting that stays involved after the slides are finished.

Be specific about what the partner adds

Graf is wary of what a colleague called “partnership tourism”: relationships that move around without developing the depth needed to deliver. She and Budischin describe a longer-term commitment built around particular customer needs, rather than an ambition to do everything together.

That focus becomes concrete in their account of a midsize industrial company exploring more digital business models. The customer was primarily oriented toward hardware and wanted to develop options beyond its existing model. At the time of the interview, the work was still underway.

Bosch contributed its innovation framework and experience in testing and developing ideas. Rapid MVP development and prototyping were the complementary capabilities digetiers brought to that project. Budischin is candid about where her side needed help:

“But what is not our strength is to develop MVPs and prototyping very quickly.”

The admission is central to the partnership's logic. A customer can understand the combined offer more clearly when each partner can explain both its contribution and its limits. Claiming universal competence would make that division harder to see.

Align the meaning behind the familiar words

Before discussing delivery, Graf wants partners to compare values and clarify what they mean by terms such as agile or business model innovation. Two organizations can use the same vocabulary while imagining different ways of working.

Process differences create another challenge. Budischin recalls the enthusiasm at the start of their partnership, followed by slower progress through administrative requirements, particularly on the Bosch side. Motivation could not make those requirements disappear.

Her response is practical: anticipate the work and start the necessary processes early. People who know the organization can plan for its constraints rather than discovering them only when a customer project is ready to begin.

The same preparation applies to the commercial argument. Partners need to be clear internally about the value for each organization and for the customer before trying to explain the joint offer externally. Otherwise, the customer is being asked to make sense of a relationship the partners have not fully worked out themselves.

Deliver together without hiding the differences

The partnership does not follow a fixed rule in which one company supplies strategy and the other implementation. Graf describes working as a tandem, adjusting responsibilities to the customer's needs.

In a smart-factory example, Bosch brought in specialist industry expertise, while digetiers contributed more to the strategic direction. Projects could originate with either organization. Day-to-day collaboration included shared project work, regular remote meetings and stepping in when the other partner was busy elsewhere.

Their preferred customer experience is coherent, but they remain explicit about the two organizations involved. Graf puts it this way:

“This is what Bosch can offer. This is what digetiers can offer, but this is what we can do together.”

Commercial arrangements can still vary. They had used separate arrangements where that was easier, rather than insisting on one purchasing structure for every engagement. Trust and transparency allow that flexibility without making the customer responsible for coordinating an unclear offer.

Give leaders a practical experience of innovation

Graf recalls a client kickoff involving around 20 senior executives from different business units. Some associated design thinking with colorful sticky notes and had not understood what it could help them do.

During the workshop, the group moved from a problem to a virtual-reality app prototype in roughly a day to a day and a half. The executives participated in creating it themselves. For Graf, the memorable result was seeing their understanding change as they experienced the method in practice.

The story supports the pair's broader argument about consulting. Customers increasingly want hands-on support, particularly when budgets and internal capacity are under pressure. A framework becomes more useful when people can apply it to something they are trying to build or test.

Budischin also points to the accountability of internal consulting: colleagues can still call after a project finishes. That experience shapes her expectation that the work should stand up after the presentation has been delivered.

Recognize a good decision to stop

Budischin's own highlight is an accelerator cohort of 24 startup teams testing ideas in the market. After eight weeks, 12 stood on stage and announced a no-go decision because they had not found the evidence needed to continue.

Those teams received more applause than the teams proceeding. She sees that response as a sign of a changing mindset: stopping early can be a valuable outcome when the evidence does not justify further commitment.

For leaders commissioning innovation work, the two stories belong together. Help people experience how an idea can become testable, then make room for an honest decision about what the test reveals. The partnership earns its value through that work, including when the best recommendation is to direct resources toward a different idea.