Innovation as a key driver of business performance

The digital transformation represents a huge op­por­tu­nity for Swiss society. However, the population will only accept it if trust in secure services and the correct handling of sensitive data are assured. Trust in new tech­nolo­gies is therefore becoming more im­por­tant, which is why Swisscom wants to serve as ‘Innovators of Trust’ for its cus­tomers and for Switzer­land as a whole. Innovative strength and trust are core values of Swisscom and central to successful tech­no­log­i­cal and social de­vel­op­ment. With this in mind, Swisscom is already addressing relevant and promising future topics intensively. It strives every day to delight its cus­tomers with the best products and services (‘Delight cus­tomers’). Swisscom is driving its growth by developing advanced products and services (‘Innovate for growth’). It also supports forward-looking solutions to make its own processes even more efficient, for example through process digitalisation (‘Achieve more with less’). Finally, innovation is key for Swisscom to position itself as the best ICT employer, attract the best talent and retain it (‘Perform together’). In order to achieve this, it works closely with partners, universities, start-ups and es­tab­lished tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies.

Swisscom has been engaged in trend and tech­nol­ogy scouting in Silicon Valley since 1998. The Outpost provides Swisscom with insights into trends, tech­nolo­gies and de­vel­op­ments in strategic innovation fields around the Silicon Valley ecosystem. This year, Swisscom paid particular attention to areas of innovation that have a highly dynamic market en­vi­ron­ment and are of growing im­por­tance: these include AI, cybersecurity and trust. The Swisscom Outpost also maintains local partnerships with promising start-ups, investors and leading US tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies whose products and business models are then launched in Switzer­land and Italy.

Swisscom Ventures has been investing in start-ups since 2007 and networking them with Swisscom as far as possible in order to stimulate innovation. In the year under review, Swisscom made in­vest­ments in five new com­pa­nies and eight follow-up in­vest­ments in existing holdings. This included xFarm, a Swiss precision agriculture company that supports more than 425,000 farms worldwide. Ad­di­tionally, Swisscom uses the Swisscom StartUp platform to support com­pa­nies and start-ups in Switzer­land with consulting, discounts on IT and cloud services, expert know-how, coaching programmes, financing and community events.

Swisscom Kickbox is an employee-driven intrapreneurship and innovation programme with a clear process, tools, methods and resources for realising innovation projects. It promotes a culture of innovation within the company and works at various strategic levels: for example, in the de­vel­op­ment of sophisticated customer-centric products and services and in employer branding to help Swisscom attract the best talent. Kickbox is available to other com­pa­nies via the spin-off rready AG.