Interview Bosch

Q1: Where do you position most of your products in the technology lifecycle
(emerging, growth or mature phase) & are you mainly focusing on sustained
innovation or disruptive innovation?

Bosch is a very big company, so we will mainly focus on Bosch Power Tools, which is their
area of experience. Bosch claims to be innovative and they are innovative, but within the
power tools market it’s a little bit more difficult, because everything is already invented
once. They had some disruptive innovation a couple of years ago (2008). So, they definitely
try to be innovative, but most of their portfolios are already known in the market. 10% of
their portfolio is disruptive innovation (mainly in Bosch automotive): eg. easy pump and
Bosch XEO, but most of innovations within power tools are sustained innovations within the
mature phase: eg. new launches, lower cost products… Their target is also the have at least
30% of their products to be younger than 2 years.

Q2: How do you manage the idea generation? Where do the ideas come from?
(Customer focus groups, patent mining, innovation tournaments…)

4 years ago they started to implement agile working methods, mainly in the headquarters.
They are still trying to figure out how to do it exactly within the regions/the sales
organizations. They do design thinking, they have focus groups and they immediately invite
the users to check whether the idea something they would need. While 6 to 10 years ago,
they just had engineers, which developed something they really loved and then no user
within their market was buying it. Therefore, the way of working has changed a lot over the
past years.

With startups within the part of Bosch, which is software driven, they hold innovation
tournaments. This is the case, because Bosch wants to be one of the 5 clouds remaining
within the world. But for power tools it’s too small to do so.

Q3: Do the terms; train schedule, stage-gate process, platform strategy... sound
familiar to you? Have you implemented some of these processes/strategies?

They have never heard about train schedule. They took design thinking course at Potsdam
University and there the stage-gate process is discussed, but they don’t use it for their
platform within power tools.

Q4: What does your sensing network look like in order to generate information on
future opportunities? What actions do you take in order to not be surprised by future
developments? (Working together with universities, scanning start-up firms, …)

Actually, they sometimes are surprised by future developments. The headquarter is working
with universities in Germany to have their ideas as well, but an advanced way of working is
only valid for their Bosh IoT cloud and Bosh Automotive, but not for power tools.
Bosch do works with small companies/start-ups that they buy to develop certain things.
When they are specialized in a certain area, where Bosch is not that experienced in, eg. the
robot mower, they get the chance to work with Bosh.

Q5: When managing disruptive innovations, what would your organizational design
look like? (Functional design, cross-functional teams, unsupported teams, or
ambidextrous organizations) See attached.

They have an ambidextrous organizational design. They work in cross-divisional teams of

Are your exploration and exploitation activities located in close geographical

In the headquarters, they have a purpose team, who is responsible for stalling and picking.
Within this team, they have R&D, engineers, marketing… all different disciplines, located on
the same place/same building. This really helps to develop and launch products.

Q6: You both have ‘Open Bosch’ and ‘Robert Bosch venture capital’, how do you
decide on which type of partnership you want with a specific company?
Is your corporate venturing strategy mainly focusing on investing in businesses that
are related to your core business? 

Open Bosch: they have a close contact with start-ups, and they decide whether the start-ups
are working on something that can be of valid for Bosh. Bosch decides every year to invest in
10 to 15 start-ups and will work closely with them. After a period, they decide whether they
will buy a certain start-up or not.

Robert Bosch venture capital: within Bosch IoT, they now really look out for businesses that
are related to their core business (adjacency). 10 years ago, they were buying companies
which were not in their core business. Now they are saying goodbye to those, one by one,
because they want to focus back on where Bosh is ? ... ?

They still look for companies to buy and then there is a team in the headquarters who are
taking care of that. These start-ups with related business can take participate in a case,
where Bosch can see whether these start-ups can add value, yes or no. Based upon that
business case, Bosch decide whether they will buy a certain start-up, yes or no. The
companies that Bosch buys, can keep their own name. They do this because of the
competitive advantage, they don’t want to let other companies know, which start-ups are
working with them.

Sustainability is definitely a criteria Bosch looks out for when searching for start-ups to work
with. This one of their main strategic pillars, so they are really investing many amounts into
it. They are the only multinational in the world that is co2 neutral.
(17:20)

Q7: Bosch has a lot of licensing agreements, both as the licensor and the licensee. 
Are there special conditions that Bosch always wants/ will never agree on?
(exclusivity, sub-licensing, technology grant-back clauses, performance obligations,
minimum duration…)

they do not have specific/special terms when discussing for a license agreement, however it
are always very long and complicated discussions.
Everything they do they claim as their own. They do not work with franchising, Bosch itself is
always the one that sells directly to the customer. But their products are used in a lot of
different applications. For example their batteries are used in a wide variety of applications:
emmaljunga used the batteries from Bosch drilling machines in their baby strollers to keep
the handles warm, anti-slip, help to go an a mountain,… But not anymore.
Much more companies are looking to use their batteries, like Gardena, They want to make
‘the battery for your home’. Like phone chargers now have to be standard, they want to
become the standard battery for the DIY world and much more areas.

Q8: When doing R&D, do you often use innovation ecosystems where you work
together with multiple other companies or universities to develop new patents?
What with the patent ownership after the collaboration? Do you have contract
templates which you frequently use?

Within power tools they definitely use universities but at the end it will be Bosch who will
apply for the patent. They are the second biggest patent subscriber in Europe, around 40 per
day (for the whole company, not only power tools).
Sometimes they do share patents but they try to avoid it. Fe the case with developing the
1AC platform together with ‘fime’ (still 13:25 min left, couldn’t understand the name well)
Was one of the rare occasions that they shared ownership as otherwise they would have
never been able to convince them to work together.

Q9: What does your intellectual property management look like? When other
companies want to use the inventions of Bosch, do you often have to deal with
problems like other companies inventing around your patents, going to court to try and
invalidate patents?
If yes, how do you try to deal with/ avoid them? (Making a portfolio of substitute
patents, cross-licensing agreements, working with a patent pool...)

Aldi Sud in Germany made power tools which looked exactly the same as Bosch blue and
Bosch green, there they took them to court as they looked to similar.
in other cases for patents often it is hard as after 2 to 3 years in China they have copied
everything. At headquarters they have a lot of lawyers checking every day that others
respect their patents.
For the things that they can not really patent, they will try to be the first on the market and
do a lot of marketing in order that everybody knows that it is their invention. But most of the
inventions they can patent, fe anti blocking for a hedge trimmer.
Q10: What does your portfolio of R&D projects look like?
Does it contain both projects in the sustained and projects in the disruptive innovation?
Are you investing big amounts in a small number of projects or are you investing
smaller amounts in many projects? Are you evaluating projects with financial
indicators or are you also using an alternative method such as giving a score on
multiple criteria? How is the division between projects with shorter-, mid- and long-
term horizons?

They have two parts in the business, the original business is more short to mid-term, as they
have to be quick to follow the market and be the first one to launch something and then
they have the new business which is long-term. For new projects they can really take a very
long time before bringing it to the market. Their quality checks are always done very
properly in a strict process in order to avoid bringing products on the market that do not
match their quality standards. Fe every tool has to make it through the drop test where it
falls from 25m and it is not allowed to break.
When evaluating new projects one of their main indicators comes from focus groups, “is this
something they would need” if not they will skip it, even sales is already involved in the very
early stage to test if they think that it is something that the market needs, if it has a price
that can challenge.

Power tools only accounts for a small percentage of Bosch’s income, 60% comes from
automotive industry. There they don’t always claim the invention like Fe abs, parking
system, microchip who does the swipe in your phone,… are Bosch inventions but then BMW
or Audi claim it. But Bosch has the patent.