+ Engineering
+ Internal Venture Building
+ Strategy
Ramboll is a leading engineering, design and consultancy company founded in Denmark in 1945 employing more than 15,000 experts worldwide throughout 300 offices in 35 countries.
Despite significant growth since 2001, margins were being squeezed and Ramboll acknowledged the impact of competitors and startups on the value chain of their industry. The sheer speed of change led Ramboll to recognize the need to leverage and systematize their ability to innovate and future-proof their organisation.
To leverage Ramboll’s enormous reserve of expertise, Rainmaking designed the inaugural ‘Ramboll Innovation Accelerator’. Ramboll was able to increase speed to market for commercially viable ideas while eliminating non-viable ideas based on data, much faster and more consistently than had previously been possible.
Applications from across all business units
Growth ventures launched in 2018 and 2019
Recognising the risks of stagnation within their organisation, Ramboll made the brave choice to focus on rapidly improving their innovation capabilities from the inside out.
By combining robust methodologies, including design thinking and lean startup, the Ramboll Internal Accelerator provides a governance, training and communications framework for developing new ideas, rapidly assessing their commercial potential and growing them to innovative businesses that unlock new revenue streams.
It also functioned as a vehicle for cultural change towards stronger client-centric based business development.
Drive an internal culture of innovation
By running a series of 20-week internal innovation sprints designed to generate new ideas, Ramboll was able to increase speed to market for commercially viable ideas while eliminating non-viable ideas faster.
Open to all teams globally, the 2018 program attracted 270 applications from across all business units. 95% of ideas were rejected within the first ten weeks. This ultimately left three final teams pitching for follow on investment at demo day.
During the program, the 3 final ideas were able to generate over £300k in revenue and secured partnerships with companies such as Google. By end of the program, the 3 teams all received investment and are forecast to generate over £1.5m in new revenue in 2019.
In 2019, 25 teams were selected to enter the Discovery Lab. Seven of these were nominated to progress to Pilot Lab. Management initially requested a maximum of five progress, but due to the high quality of entrants, this was expanded to incorporate the full seven.
In 2021, Ramboll expects to generate 18 million USD revenue via seven “internal startups”. None of these existed at the start of 2018.
Start something. Faster Growth Lab by Rainmaking
