bauma: digitalisation of the business model with open innovation
The bauma Open Innovation platform transfers the business model of Messe München into the digital world of tomorrow. It is the most important component for the evolution from a trade fair organiser towards a digital service provider.
bauma, as one of the world’s biggest fairs, is the globally renowned trademark of the Messe München. Even though new exhibition halls have been built and the waiting list – especially for bauma exhibitors – is particularly long, the Messe München is already thinking of its future direction.
bauma Open Innovation
Traditionally, trade fairs first and foremost constitute an opportunity to meet existing as well as prospective customers and partners in person. However, they are often limited in time and regionally dispersed.
The newly-created bauma Open Innovation platform offers a solution which goes beyond the classical trade fair product and meets the needs of the exhibitors in a digitised world.
The online platform is also useful for customers – their experience and interaction with suppliers does not have to end after the trade fair visit. They can engage as experts in projects at any time in order to develop solutions for a given industry or for a specific client.
Exhibitors are even able to interact with customers and partners all year long and can collectively solve challenges related to their innovation management. Individual people can take part in such processes too while having their patent rights protected. Thus, the bauma Open Innovation platform can be called a digital fair.
The role of the savvy company
the savvy company accompanied Messe München end to end with the implementation and roll-out of the Open Innovation platform. In addition, we were involved in the development of the corresponding business model by looking at the needs of trade fair visitors in more detail.
This included the complete setup of the platform, the identification and the acquisition of potential project owners as well as operational support for the first innovation projects.
In order to get the organisation ready for the new methods, several workshops and customer meetings were conducted to familiarise the management as well as the employees of Messe München with the Open Innovation approach.