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Published on 27 July 2020

Co-innovation: proactive and collaborative development through a whole world of initiatives

As part of a co-creation approach, we interact closely with partners, ecosystems and external stakeholders to develop a wide range of innovative solutions. These help us make the most of our networks while ensuring a simple and intuitive customer experience. Our vision is one of open innovation, with the customer at its core.

 

Collaborating with start-ups

We provide a wide range of support to start-ups through our investment arm, our Orange Fab acceleration programme, competitions such as the Orange Social Venture Prize, support for incubators in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and numerous local and regional initiatives. 
To date, we’ve helped more than a thousand start-ups throughout the seasons across our footprint.

Visit the Orange start-up hub.

 

Joining forces with the developer community

Many of our assets are open to developers, integrators, publishers and device manufacturers, including application programming interfaces (APIs). We’ve seen exponential growth in APIs over the past five years in all our regions and in all fields of application such as identity, payment, communications, IoT and data. We also provide dedicated support systems and technical solutions to accelerate their development: connectivity kits, our Datavenue Ready programme, ID management tools and more. 

Find out more about Orange APIs.
 

 

Cooperating with academia 

We also build relationships with research and educational institutions, with the aim of advancing knowledge and bridging the gap between science and industry. We maintain 90 research contracts with the best university labs in the world and contribute to more than 60 national and European cooperative projects. 
Likewise, to date, we have also sponsored six chairs on topics ranging from technology and engineering to economics and digital regulation.  
 

 

Forging partnerships with industrial groups and manufacturers  

We’re increasing the number of collaborations with big corporate groups, for example to co-develop products and services, which is what we are doing with Ericsson and UTAC Céram in order to test the 5G functionalities needed for autonomous vehicles.   
 

 

Working with standardisation bodies

To achieve influential, effective innovation, our teams actively participate in defining norms and standards with international bodies. More than 350 employees are directly involved in technical bodies and operator forums (GSMA, FFT, ETNO…).
Of the 45 international bodies we work with, we take a leading role in four of them: 

We’re also one of the top three operators contributing to Open Source communities.

Our open innovation policy aims to support the digital transformation of our Orange Business Services customers and explore the potential of high tech solutions in multiple sectors, from transport to energy, finance, health, education, administration and entertainment.