The new Girbau LAB is Girbau’s open innovation platform to promote innovation and transform the industrial laundry business.
Girbau LAB has three strategic challenges to innovate in the industrial laundry sector. The digital transformation, the sustainability-circularity and the human wellness and health are the challenges of the open innovation platform of Girbau. It already has two projects underway, iDrivers and Indtech Challenge.
Mariona Sanz, former innovation manager at Acció, is leading the project with the support of the CEOs, Mercè Girbau and Pere Girbau, the general manager of the group, Guillem Clofent, and the president of Lead to Change, Xavier Marcet.
The aim of Girbau LAB is to go a step beyond Girbau’s R&D activities and opt for the most disruptive innovation, in order to generate more value for its customers with innovation as its driving force and cornerstone.
Girbau LAB therefore wishes to be close to where the knowledge, technology and innovative business opportunities are generated. Its global ecosystem is built in collaboration with key innovation players, including different universities and technology centres and business clusters, and by taking part in innovation-related programmes, as the ones run by ACCIÓ and Creacció. Collaboration is also being explored at international level, as the recent visit to San Francisco, or the ones planned to Boston and Israel.
Girbau LAB aims to help add value both within and outside the company, through technology-driven disruptive innovation
Girbau LAB also wants to promote the development of new internal capacities. The iDrivers project is in an in-house process to generate ideas for meeting the challenges currently faced by the business, so promoting intrapreneurship. In 2018 has seen successful completion of an internal call for proposals which has received 60 business ideas. Work is under way to turn 5 of the ideas into future business or help to improve existing business.
Girbau LAB is a member of Barcelona Tech City, an association of entrepreneurs, companies and players on the digital scene in Barcelona, and carries on some of its activities in the Pier 01 building developed by this association. It also has an office at Girbau headquarters in Vic.
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