Client Context

A Tier-1 automotive supplier operating in a highly mature and competitive market sought to create new growth engines beyond its core business. While the organization possessed strong industrial assets, engineering know-how, and a global footprint, it lacked a structured mechanism to systematically convert ideas into scalable new business opportunities.

The client engaged Kepler Ventures to design and deploy a New Business Factory—a user- and business-centric innovation model capable of identifying, experimenting with, and industrializing future-ready business opportunities.

The Challenge

The client faced multiple strategic and organizational challenges:

• Need to invent new business opportunities while leveraging existing industrial assets and capabilities
• Difficulty fostering innovation within a mature, efficiency-driven organization
• Absence of a structured hypothesis-driven approach covering technical, market, and business validation
• Limited exposure to external innovation ecosystems such as startups, VCs, and technology partners
• Risk of innovation efforts remaining disconnected from scale-up and industrialization

Kepler’s Approach

Kepler Ventures executed a 12-month end-to-end innovation transformation program, combining operating model design, capability building, and real-world experimentation.

Phase 1: Innovation Diagnostic & Foundation Setup

• Assessment of the existing innovation framework, governance, and decision-making processes
• Design of a dedicated New Business / Innovation operating model
• Setup of a cross-functional innovation team with targeted training on innovation, experimentation, and business modeling

Phase 2: Opportunity Exploration & Ideation

• Asset mapping to identify monetizable industrial, technical, and market capabilities
• Launch of internal innovation challenges to surface ideas across the organization
• Engagement with external innovation ecosystems (startups, VCs, partners) to identify early-stage opportunities

Phase 3: Opportunity Investigation & Validation

• Voice of Customer and pain-point analysis
• Business model assessment and partner identification
• Technical feasibility and scalability evaluation
• Structured hypothesis testing across technical, market, and business dimensions

Phase 4: Business Experimentation

• Launch of selected opportunities as controlled business experiments
• Execution outside the traditional R&D environment to accelerate learning
• KPI tracking across market traction, technical performance, and business viability
• Preparation of validated opportunities for transfer to existing or newly created business units

Impact & Outcome

• Established a repeatable New Business Factory operating model, embedding innovation as a structured, measurable capability rather than an ad-hoc initiative
• Enabled the client to systematically convert ideas into validated business opportunities, accelerating the journey from ideation to experimentation
• Created a clear innovation-to-industrialization pathway, ensuring that high-potential concepts were ready for transfer into existing or new business units
• Increased organizational exposure to customers, startups, and external ecosystems, strengthening market relevance and speed of learning
• Delivered a tangible new business pipeline with validated opportunities and significant long-term revenue potential