From the birth of the company 100 years ago until today, we have learned that innovation is a path that leads to the future and our goal is to invent it. This is one of the main tasks of Telefónica Digital Innovation: to innovate with new products and services in the digital sphere in order to continue adapting in a more agile way to a society in constant evolution, transforming opportunities into real projects. We promote innovation and create new technology in digital platforms such as network API-fying, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Web3 and Metaverse as well as quantum computing. With all these innovative products and services, we want to improve people’s lives and offer new business opportunities for professionals and companies, while addressing the different security and sustainability needs that society demands.
These new developments offer a multitude of possibilities, and we are gradually exploring them. We learn how the future works in order to continue to make it happen. In this article, we tell you about some of the most important milestones we are working on to contribute to the digital revolution.
What do we offer society?
Open innovation
At Telefónica we strive to identify the most pioneering projects in the market and attract the best talent and technologies available in the startup environment. We want to incorporate their development into our products and services to innovate better and faster. Our Open Innovation team is the link between the company and the entrepreneurial ecosystem: its mission is to study the market in search of new opportunities. As a company we are aware of the need to understand our customers’ needs in order to offer them innovative solutions, otherwise we run the risk of becoming obsolete and disappearing. That’s why we want to help entrepreneurs take their projects to the next level.
Wayra and Open Future are the vehicles we use to innovate our products and services. Telefónica Ventures is Telefónica’s Corporate Venture Capital vehicle for strategic investments. We have created a network of more than 40 partners comprising large companies, governments and other entities with whom we collaborate and provide mutual services. We have hubs across 10 countries and investments in more than 1,000 startups. Our mission to contribute to society means we continue to grow every year by adding new startups and projects to our portfolio.
Internal innovation and technology
At Telefónica we have experts in different areas of innovation who are passionate about technology. We work as a team to create the cutting-edge technology discovering new opportunities and enhancing existing ones. We have taken over the role of innovation from Telefónica R&D with all its 50 years of trial and error and learnings to continue to foresee the future. All of this to positively impact the lives of people, who are the raison d’être for our technology.
In addition, our Innovation and Talent Hub at Telefónica’s headquarters in Madrid, focuses on promoting technological innovation and training in new digital skills through multiple initiatives such as LaCabina, The Thinx and the Digital Operations Centre in the field of innovation and 42 Madrid and Universitas in the field of education and training. In it we want to address, in collaboration with the company’s stakeholders, the new challenges of a sustainable digital society that leaves no one behind.
We also highlight pioneering industry projects like Open Gateway in which we play a leading role as we open up our telco capabilities to companies and developers, to usher in a new generation of services.
At Telefónica we are constantly searching for and developing new opportunities that offer cutting-edge experiences to society. We have a long history of innovation, in which we have been learning and evolving, constantly making things happen. The entertainment and communication possibilities we are developing with the products and services of the various initiatives allow our users new ways of relating to one another in a much more human way.
