- Enel was named among the 25 most active companies working with startups, as part of the Corporate Startup Stars Awards 2021, the annual ranking launched by Mind the Bridge and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)
- Enel also received the Corporate Startup Procurement Award for the fifth year in a row
Rome/Paris, December 16th, 2021 – Enel is recognized among the 25 companies that most actively work with startups in this year’s Corporate Startup Stars Awards, the prestigious annual ranking launched by Mind the Bridge under the European Commission’s Startup Europe Partnership initiative in 2016 and scaled globally in 2020 thanks to a partnership with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). Named by startups themselves as one of the corporates that is most active and helpful when working with small businesses, the company also received for the fifth year in a row the Corporate Startup Procurement Award, acknowledging the collaborations that resulted in long term relationships, as well as the impact of working with startups on the company’s overall business.
"Once again, this award testifies how important working with startups is for Enel," said Ernesto Ciorra, Chief Innovability® Officer at Enel. "We are accelerating our progress along the road towards a zero emission future, but any effort would be vain if innovation were not at the core of our business model. The more than 450 projects carried out with startups and the over 110 solutions we scaled, are at the cornerstone of our sustainable innovation strategy, creating long term value for us, for the startups and for the world around us.”
“The Corporate Startup Procurement Award recognizes the importance the Group attributes to the procurement process with both big corporates and small businesses,” said Francesca Di Carlo, Head of Global Procurement at Enel. “Streamlining the purchasing process is one of the issues Enel’s procurement team is working on, in order to make our suppliers’ job easier, while reducing time and effort. Startups can work with us through a dedicated fast track, covering both the testing activities and the subsequent implementation of the technology at large scale.”
Enel has created a global network of 10 Innovation Hubs located in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Chile (Santiago), Israel (Tel Aviv), Italy (Milan, Catania, Pisa), Russia (Moscow), Spain (Madrid), and the United States (Boston, San Francisco), to scout for the best startups relevant to Enel’s businesses. Enel opened its first innovation hub in 2016 in Tel Aviv, and since then has scouted more than 11,000 startups globally, launched more than 450 projects with startups and scaled up more than 110 solutions.
The main areas of the company’s work with startups include, among others, energy storage, big data, energy management, smart home, electric mobility, IoT, predictive maintenance, artificial intelligence, smart technologies, fintech and robotics.
The companies that received the Corporate Startup Stars awards are those that have established the most successful, mutually-beneficial partnerships with startups, whether through procurement, licensing, partnerships, accelerators, direct investment, acquisitions or other dedicated programs.
Mind the Bridge and the International Chamber of Commerce consolidated their partnership established last year in order to gather applications from all over the world, and to stimulate the growth of corporate-startup collaboration globally, by showcasing success stories and awarding the best-in-class, thus stimulating a virtuous cycle where every actor positively influences the others.