I. Airbus Scale
This year Airbus Scale has replaced Airbus BizLab, Airbus’s flagship incubator launched in 2015. BizLab was created to support early-stage startups and corporate projects by providing mid-scale facilities and resources within the aerospace industry. This new innovation unit reflects an evolution in how Airbus engages with innovation, both inside and outside the company.
BizLab is out - Airbus Scale is in!
Since November 2021, Airbus Scale brings together and diversifies internal ventures and startup partnerships to create and grow jointly owned, profitable, fully-fledged businesses, strengthening Airbus’s competitive edge. Technology, internal and external concepts, entrepreneurial intelligence, and win-win collaboration are the key pillars Airbus Scale relies on.
Today, Airbus Scale promotes and identifies internal business innovation opportunities that can evolve into solutions for external markets, bringing them to market and attracting external investment that can generate spin-offs and create value for Airbus.
As a result, Airbus Scale fosters and enables a more impactful discovery ecosystem.
A unique innovation
Today, innovative companies place increasing emphasis on marketing. Airbus aims to address this by prioritizing strong growth through a completely new strategy. Project leaders supported by the program will be able to work directly with Airbus teams based in France, Germany, and Spain.
“The startups we will be working with already have their own offices and fairly sizable teams. Offering them workspace does not add any value,” says the German manager.
II. Its missions
Airbus Scale will co-invest to create fully fledged, profitable companies in order to identify and develop growth opportunities. It also advocates the involvement of startups to further extend Airbus’s competitive advantage.
Airbus Scale’s mission is:
- Foster intrapreneurship and leverage corporate innovation
- Build and launch new businesses that will support the company’s recovery and future growth
- Continue to strengthen our long-standing commitment to co-innovation by identifying and partnering with more mature startups to develop and scale concepts through mutually beneficial collaborations
- Actively contribute to the development of future programs in support of Airbus’s zero-emission ambition
Airbus Scale is a complementary offering within the Airbus ecosystem and operates in collaboration with the company’s innovation hubs, internal innovation centers, and existing research facilities.
III. Industry sector
Startups have access to a wide range of Airbus coaches, experts, and support staff who provide technical and business guidance in their respective fields.
However, the company no longer wishes to focus solely on projects limited to the aerospace and aviation sectors. Instead, it is expanding into more distant fields such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. “If we want to fly a hydrogen-powered aircraft by 2035, we will also need to know how to produce green hydrogen and deliver it to airports,” says Christian Lindener.
IV. Ambitions
One of the company’s major new developments lies in its ambitions. Its goal is to review 200 innovation projects in order to identify those with the greatest potential, selecting around twenty each year. Investment levels are assessed on a case-by-case basis, depending on Airbus’s potential stake in these new ventures.
In addition, the group aims to launch three startups per year through partnerships linked to companies already selected for high-potential innovation projects, as Airbus wants to explore its future business models as well as topics beyond aviation.
Airbus Scale’s primary purpose is to connect with startups whose technologies are already mature. This marks a break from BizLab’s original mission, which, over five years, did not succeed in producing breakthrough technologies applicable to aviation or in scaling startups internationally.
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