SUEZ Water Spain | The Discovery of our social footprint

SUEZ Waters, a global leader in water management and associated services, activated intrapreneurial teams to lead a new movement of social innovation within the company. At dot., we supported the activation of the first changemaker leadership team.

Challenge: Integrating social innovation as a strategic vector for value creation

As global leaders in water management and supply, SUEZ Aguas de Barcelona aim to lead a movement to address social challenges they can impact through their supply chain. This new commitment to incorporating social innovation as a growth driver for the company required the creation of a bespoke methodology, which dot. supported in its development:

Social Team Entrepreneurship

Shared Vision and Intrapreneurial Leadership

Context Analysis

Water Trend Analysis and Definition of SUEZ's Social Footprint

Changemaker Networks

Identifying Partners for Applied Social Innovation Projects

Open Innovation

Open Innovation Platforms and Multi-Stakeholder Participation Processes

Prototyping

Piloting New Touchpoints and Iteration Planning

Pitching

From Idea to Business (with the Aqualogy Board of Directors)

Studying and understanding the ideals, references and aspirations of a target consumer provides companies with the necessary tools to respond to these needs. This pretext prompted the search for trends in the world of water: Water Trends.

Solution: New intrapreneurial projects developed through new collaboration networks

Having built a shared vision of the company around social innovation, we worked with leaders from various strategic areas of SUEZ to map the key stakeholders in its value chain (SUEZ itself, the Water School, Aquae Foundation, municipalities/governments, educational institutions, social entrepreneurs, citizens, nature itself, etc.) as well as to identify interesting projects already underway within the teams. These projects could potentially become part of the company’s portfolio of replicable or scalable solutions across the territories in which it operates. Some examples include:

Watly: Water purification + energy + Internet for remote rural areas

Fons de Solidaritat: Responsible investment fund

HackatH20n: Open innovation project for developing applications at the Water Museum

Buen Vecino (Good Neighbor): Community inclusion in Chile / Aguas Andinas

Thanks to this collaboration, a new organizational design was outlined, proposing the inclusion of new cross-functional intrapreneurial teams across the different areas and departments of the company.

In addition, a common framework for social entrepreneurship at SUEZ was defined, consisting of 14 Key Points that shape the Innovation Model. The roles of team members were established, as well as the phases, stages, processes, and deliverables required to take an idea all the way to implementation within SUEZ's business operations.

It has been a true pleasure for dot. to witness firsthand the transformation of a large global company through its commitment to social innovation models. This experience has demonstrated the transformative power that major companies can wield by establishing processes that fully understand their real impact across the value chain, proposing projects that not only generate real impact for stakeholders but also design new business models that make corporate growth more sustainable and responsible.