Case Study
The better the question The better the answer The better the world works
Case Study

Bridging the gap between big and small in business

How EY is bringing together organizations and entrepreneurs to help solve complex business problems.

(Chapter breaker)
1

The better the question

How do we help companies think big by acting small?

Connecting corporates with entrepreneurs to solve complex problems and accelerate innovation

Businesses have never been under greater pressure to innovate. So how can they access the skills and talent they need to solve complex business problems and find new routes to growth?

Nodia is a community of entrepreneurial talent – powered by EY – that transforms the way corporates innovate by giving them access to a community of talented entrepreneurs. Acting as a bridge between businesses and entrepreneurs, it enables both to collaborate successfully.

According to a recent Innosight survey, 50% of today’s S&P 500 companies will no longer exist in ten years’ time as technology continues to transform industries. In response, businesses are creating their own internal innovation programs and trying to tap into the real-life experience and talent of proven entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs can accelerate change in corporations using their first-hand understanding of disruptive technology, ability to transfer knowledge across sectors and turn ideas into reality. And in return, working with corporates gives them the opportunity to tackle real world problems and have a large scale impact backed by the business’ brand, reach and resources.

Yet these entrepreneurs can be hard to access and often operate primarily through personal networks. Entrepreneurs also expect autonomy and flexibility, which makes collaborating with them harder for corporates. Even if corporates succeed in sourcing the right talent, there are challenges around successful collaboration because of cultural differences and lengthy corporate processes.

 

(Chapter breaker)
2

The better the answer

Delivering impactful and lasting change

Addressing the challenge through an innovative community-based operating model

Nodia provides access to a pool of carefully selected entrepreneurial talent globally and helps clients find the right entrepreneurs, based on their specific problem, and engage with them in a variety of ways to deliver shared outcomes and continued learning. This may be through mentoring a corporate’s internal teams to deliver open innovation or placements into innovation projects. Finally, the platform enables collaboration through speedy contracting, on-boarding and payments.

Nodia is already live, bringing corporates and entrepreneurs together to work on projects ranging from generating new ideas to in-market experimentation and scale-up, to monetisation.

For a global automotive client, Nodia sourced entrepreneurs and placed them in multiple teams with complementary skills (comprised of both EY advisers and entrepreneurs) in London, Boston, Hong Kong and Delhi to help them develop and trial new business ideas. This resulted in deep customer and market insight informing a multi-million dollar investment.

For a leading energy company, Nodia put together three teams of entrepreneurs to run a series of innovation experiments. This enabled the client to accelerate the creation of a five-year innovation vision and roadmap, a viable business model, and a minimum viable set of services.

(Chapter breaker)
3

The better the world works

Riding the wave

A global network to help clients with business transformation in the digital age

Nodia is an EY wavespace™ resident project in London. Wavespace is our global network of growth and innovation centres, which help clients face the challenges and opportunities of continuous change, digitisation and disruption. By helping clients achieve radical breakthroughs in rapidly changing markets, Nodia is helping to build a better working world.

Contact us

Like what you’ve seen? Get in touch to learn more.