Page - 246 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

more reliable information to the customers throughout their travels. DB aims to bringmore traffic to its environmentally friendly rail network,particularly its freight transport. Digital transformation and new technologies are changingDB’s core business. Thecompanyusesdigital technologiesandmethods tooffer attractivenewproducts and strengthen those that it alreadyhas.Whether on the train, at a station, or on the railway, digital functioning enables it to enhance or simplify its services. In doing so, it increases its capacity and remains environmentally friendly. A 20% increase in the capacity of its rail networks has been achieved through the use of a stan- dardised digital system.DB’s aimhere is to achieve improved performance, better service quality, greater efficiency, andmore growth on the rail network. A part of DB’s corporate strategy, the ‘digital railway’ also promotes the reputation of Germany as an industrially developed country. DB Intrapreneurs is open to all employees (intrapreneurship track) and business units (called ‘co-creation’) fromall parts of theorganisation, frommaintenanceand engineering to sales. This means that employees can either apply to participate in teams and independently of their own business unit to solve validation problems and create new or improved products and services. Work in teams is always required. Operating independently of their own business unit means that teams pursue their intrapreneurial endeavours in addition to their regular jobs—with the exception of 4workshop dayswhich they attendwithin their working hours. In both cases, DB Intrapreneurs has developed, tested, and iterated a clearly structured innovation process across four stages that see employees first become intrapreneurs and then entrepreneurs: 1. Engagement Phase: Prior to joining a batch, participants can attend several workshop and community events to generate ideas and prepare themselves before joining a batch of teams. A batch includes several teams entering the designphase together to test theirproblemsandsolutions.Everyemployee (and, in some cases, everyone) can participate in these events or get feedback about their ideas. The goal of this pre-batch phase is to encourage potential intra- preneurs and generate new ideas as well as lower the entrance barriers and enable a soft entry into the programme. 2. Design Phase: Across three workshops, intrapreneurs identify and validate a problem aswell as develop an initial concept of a solution. During this phase, theparticipantsmust pass several gates and, if necessary, restructure andchange their team to proceed. The highlight of the design phase is the PitchDay at the end, where teams pitch before entering the build phase, which is the section where they receive funding and intensive coaching. During this phase, each team is supported by a dedicatedmethod coach. 3. Build Phase: Over the course of three or four months, intrapreneurship teams assess how their products will behave on the market. This includes user research, service design, requirement engineering, development of first low-fidelity prototypes, business case modelling, and the drafting of a go-to-market strategy. Digital Intrapreneurship: The Corporate Solution… 253