Driving business innovation & value

Rolls-Royce’s R² Data Labs act as a development hub for new services, enhancing how we improve the way we and our customers operate. The team acts as a ‘data innovation cell’ across Rolls-Royce, connecting people from across the business to collect, champion and inspire data and AI innovation. This happens parallel even as we remain focused on helping customers reimagine the way they operate, finding insights to unlock more value. This means that Rolls-Royce is constantly adapting to new technology and finding ways to align it to old challenges in all functions.

We have Ecosystem partnerships with deep strategic large-scale technology providers such as Tata Consultancy Services and  Microsoft, all the way to smaller  nimble start-ups or near-start-up businesses with interesting technology, adaptions and capabilities that encourage out-of-the-box thinking so we can collectively harness quickly rather than  build  internally, freeing up resources in the process..

Strategic partnerships with  international governments helps us understand out how we can unlock innovation funding revenues to enable us deliver the very innovations we wish  to deliver.

We recognise that some of the best digital capabilities exist outside our business. For Rolls-Royce to continue to pioneer the power that matters and be a strong industrial partner, we must champion collaboration. Organisations have interesting data sets that they might want to share with us, and we might want to bring them in to complement the data we have. While we might do it in a way that delivers value to our business, we might also create data-sharing propositions that allow us to deliver value to the marketplace.

The drive is in line with Rolls-Royce’s commitment to collaborative innovation and building an ecosystem of partners that harnesses the latest thinking and technologies from a wide community of innovators.

A global network of digital capability, our Ecosystem already includes more than 700 partners from across Europe, India, USA and the Asia-Pacific region.

Sitting at the heart of our vision for the digital age is a collaborative approach to innovation, where we actively look to develop new, radical ways of working to maintain our competitive edge. In line with this vision, Rolls-Royce has been sponsoring, and collaborating with niche technology start-ups in the areas of AI, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Application Development and Future Technologies across the world to help validate, build and grow their business. These efforts are steadily adding to the rich pool of talent.

Rolls-Royce has specifically chosen Bengaluru to launch this programme in India due to our presence of a strong aerospace engineering team and availability of excellent talent. We also have a good manufacturing presence allowing us to innovate and create proof of concepts very quickly. This in combination with the growing number of technology companies and a strong ecosystem for start-ups provide acceleration capabilities beyond other locations. According to recent reports, Bengaluru is now ranked as the city with the highest growth index for start-up hubs, followed by London and Tel Aviv. The city is one among the nine ‘International Start-up Hubs’ outside United States and is recognised as the start-up capital of India.

Bengaluru is home to many education and research institutions that play a major role in supporting and promoting the ecosystem. The vast entrepreneurial and workforce talent available in the city can be attributed to these institutes. It is important that this talent be absorbed within the city.

Also, a combination of favourable, friendly policy interventions that promote enhanced academia-industry-start-up linkages and collaborations will further boost the market sentiment, contributing to a more vibrant and effective entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Rolls-Royce partners with Tata Consultancy Services and Microsoft, two globally-recognised digital service providers. The experience and relationships have been great learning journeys. As part of the partnership, TCS – a leading provider of IT services, consulting and business solutions – provides digital platform capability, allowing data to be captured, shared and analysed more easily across Rolls-Royce so that new products and services can be developed at pace.