Russia-based energy, mining and steel group Severstal has launched an open innovation portal in a bid to improve its relationships with entrepreneurs and other industry professionals.
The Open Innovations platform sets startups a list of challenges for Severstal and invites them to solve the issues, and potentially assess their technologies at the company’s enterprise zones and its cooperative innovation facility, Technopark.
The initiative is intended to complement Severstal’s existing open innovation activities, such as corporate venturing unit Severstal Ventures and the metallurgical industry-focused SteelTech Accelerator.
Agnes Ritter, Severstal’s chief technical director and head of its transformation department, said: “We hope that the platform will attract startups and industry experts, and that together we can make metallurgy a more advanced and technologically developed industry.”
