Slingshot Accelerator: embedding rapid experimentation in corporate startup accelerators
At first glance, accelerators and corporate innovation seem to be on different sides of the innovation spectrum. Slingshot Accelerator aims to bring them together, infusing Australia's largest corporations with ideas, methods, and talent from Australia’s most promising start-ups. Slingshot matches corporates with top-end entrepreneurs and disruptive start-ups in order to build innovative and market-changing technologies.
Exponentially has been one of a number of companies involved in Slingshot’s Accelerators since 2017, running workshops and sprints to embed pretotyping and rapid experimentation into the innovation processes of both startups and corporates. Alongside Slingshot, Exponentially has changed the way that Australia’s large corporations validate early-stage ideas. Through a series of workshops, we worked with corporates and start-ups to test ideas using pretotyping and rapid experimentation, in order to determine which ones should be candidates for further investment. We've worked with some exciting startups and scale-ups for accelerator programs at Qantas, Caltex, HCF, News Corp, and Lion. Let’s dig into each of them.
Qantas
As part of Slingshot and Qantas’ AVRO Accelerator, Exponentially ran a workshop to give early-stage founders the skills to rapidly experiment and pretotype their ideas. David Parfett, former Head of Group Innovation and Ventures for Qantas Group, says that one of his team’s core responsibilities was “supporting the core business design, to validate and deliver “incremental” innovation initiative.” Pretotyping and rapid experimentation is an incremental methodology that de-risks the innovation process. It allows innovation teams to test and iterate ideas, and fail quickly, early and safely, in order to gather data and incrementally improve. “Having a disciplined process, which an accelerator offers, to support this strategy allows my team to focus on a broad range of activities,” says David.
Caltex Australia
“Our expectation for the Spark accelerator program was to help embed a culture of innovation within Caltex and to ensure our customers, shareholders and employees are part of that journey,” says Beatrice Bowen, Head of Design, Format & New Business at Caltex Australia. When designing and running experiments, the customer always needs to be front-of-mind. Experiments are designed in order to gauge whether or not a customer is genuinely interested in a product or service, so that the company can make informed decisions based on reliable data about which ideas to develop. “Caltex has a long history of adapting to changing consumer needs,” says Beatrice. “Caltex Spark continues this journey to ensure we cast a wide net for ideas.” Exponentially’s pretotyping and rapid experimentation workshops played an important role in ensuring that the ideas that moved forward into further development were highly successful, because they had been tested and validated. This is evidenced by Caltex’s 75% success rate across the Caltex Spark cohort both in customer deals, potential investments and multiple trials. Beatrice says, “We’re really proud of the results we generated… [and] we’re keen to keep the momentum.”
HCF
Facilitated by Slingshot, HCF Catalyst is Australia’s leading health-technology scaleup accelerator. Exponentially worked with HCF and its matched start-ups to test and validate ideas that would help accelerate enterprise-ready businesses towards a potential partnership with HCF. “In the Catalyst program, HCF looks for business ideas aligned with HCF’s vision to make healthcare more affordable, understandable, high quality and customer centric,” says CEO Sheena Jack. Pretotyping and rapid experimentation helped support start-ups to iterate their ideas and gather data to help validate them. This allowed the start-ups and scale-ups to drastically improve the quality of the ideas they were pitching to HCF; this helps to increase the success of these products and services in pilot programs, and eventually ensures their success in the market. “The great ideas from the program [can be] translated into meaningful programs, services and ultimately better health outcomes for our members,” says Jack.
News Corp
According to Christopher Gale, former Head of Strategic Development at News Corp Australia, “there were two primary expectations for the [Slingshot-facilitated News Bolt accelerator] program. Firstly, to re-embed a culture of innovation across News Corp Australia and secondly, to foster ideas from the broadest cross-section of our business.” Exponentially’s pretotyping workshops offered structured tools and a repeatable methodology that allowed the company to experiment, validate, and iterate ideas and embed innovation into News Corp’s culture. “News Bolt succeeded because we were able to create an environment where ideas could be developed, and we were able to provide a toolkit for our staff to do so,” says Christopher. “We now have a process and a framework to capture and nurture truly innovative ideas… [We will] continue to develop the ideas that came out of the accelerator [and] are now working hard to continue to validate the ideas as a part of our decision to continue to invest in growth.”
Lion
For Lion - one of the region’s most innovative food and beverage companies - the Slingshot accelerator approach was an experiment in embracing experimentation. “We didn’t set clear goals or objectives beyond testing and learning,” says Edward Massey, Lion’s former Group Strategy Manager. Exponentially’s rapid experimentation workshops helped to embed a philosophy of testing and learning into the team’s innovation process. By testing and iterating ideas, the company could make informed decisions about where to invest, and continue to use the structured, repeatable process of pretotyping to embed innovation within the organisation. “To be successful in this space, you need to embed a culture of innovation that is sustainable, repeatable and ground up,” says Edward. “The best ideas often come from the depths of the organisation or externally – leadership in innovation is providing the catalyst for ideas, not the ideas themselves.” Pretotyping and rapid experimentation shifts the focus away from the ideas themselves, and instead emphasises the importance of testing and iterating on initial ideas to gather reliable data and ensure that only the best ideas are moving forward.