Innovation & Business Building

Working with other innovators to help ideas take flight

As a driver of innovation in the area of housing, we are developing new ideas for customer products and services in our Innovation & Business Building department. To do this, we purposefully pursue an open innovation strategy. By intentionally opening up the innovation process, we can develop new ideas together with external partners while benefiting from the interlinking of different competencies, expertise and technologies. This enables innovative potential to be fully exploited and our innovative capacity to be strengthened.

And we are always looking for more innovators to join us.

As the interface between external partners and the Group, the Innovation & Business Building department strengthens Vonovia’s innovative capacity through the use of various collaborative formats, such as ideation and design thinking workshops, innovation challenges and pilot projects.

Universities and research institutes

We see huge potential in working with students and academic staff with a great affinity for matters of innovation and a willingness to think outside the box. Our aim is to work together to develop ideas for products and services in the area of housing, scout for talent and expand our networks.

Start-Ups

Start-ups are the perfect partner for the rapid development and testing of new ideas, products, services and technologies. By working together, we aim to create scalable housing solutions with added value for our customers, thereby strengthening our company’s innovative capacity.

Corporates

Collaboration with innovative companies provides the opportunity to bundle competencies, create synergies and benefit from the two-way exchange of experience. By building strategic partnerships, we aim to work together to develop successful innovations and tap into new markets and customer groups.

We look forward to this collaboration and offer the opportunity for new ideas to be tested in partnership with Vonovia – and with around 1 million customers, we offer tremendous scaling potential.

Alexander Weihe

Head of Innovation & Business Building

Areas of innovation

We are currently looking for innovative ideas in the following areas

Smart Services

We are always on the lookout for smart, digitally supported products and services, so we can offer our customers greater convenience and improve their quality of living. We are specifically interested in solutions in the areas of smart home, local supply, last-mile logistics and innovative housing and spatial design, to name but a few examples.

Energy & Sustainability

To secure a decentralized energy supply for our neighborhoods, we focus on the analysis and implementation of innovative, sustainable technologies. We are therefore interested in solutions for local power generation and seasonal storage, as well as AI-based, self-learning energy management systems.

Data - Advanced Analytics

With the aim of developing data- and AI-based use cases with economic and innovative added value, we are open to fresh ideas from the fields of data science, machine learning and AI. In addition, we are always interested in new, supplementary datasets as well as the latest technologies and tools for data preparation, analysis and visualization.

Mobility

In order to achieve sustainable changes in mobility behavior, we focus on integrated mobility concepts. Specifically, this involves building a seamless system in which the neighborhood is the hub for various mobility services. A key approach in this regard is shared mobility services (e.g. (e-)bikes, (e-)scooters, (e-)vehicles), which offer customers flexible, independent mobility.

Senior Residents

Elderly people are becoming an increasingly important customer group with the same desire to continue living independently in their own homes for as long as possible. In order to ensure that care can increasingly be provided from the comfort of people’s own homes in future, we are interested in innovative ambient assisted living products and services, such as fall sensors, voice recognition and emergency call systems.

Why it’s worth working with Vonovia

Customer access

Being a housing provider, Vonovia benefits from some of the most long-term customer relationships there are and therefore offers direct access to around one million people in three countries.

Scaling

With more than 550,000 residential units and nearly 800 neighborhoods, Vonovia offers tremendous scaling potential.

Network

Thanks to the excellent networking within the Group and the real estate sector, the Innovation & Business Building department is the perfect starting point for innovative minds.

Industry expertise

We offer close cooperation with various experts from the residential real estate market leader.

Pilot projects

We offer the opportunity to test innovations in several neighborhoods with real customers for acceptance, cost-effectiveness and feasibility.

True innovative success comes from the ability to tap into external knowledge outside of your own comfort zone. This is why we here at Vonovia rely on an open innovation approach and cooperate with customers and partners when developing new ideas.

Dr. Isabel Ohlies

Head of Innovation Management

Innovation collaborations

An overview of our current collaborations

TU Dortmund

We work together with students to hold idea workshops on the topics of demographic change, urbanization, climate change, integration, and Generation Z.

Bochum University

We help to run the Innovation Management 2 business management module at Bochum University of Applied Sciences to develop ideas for new products and services for our neighborhoods and customers.

Rewe

To improve local supply, Vonovia and REWE are testing the operation of two grocery pick-up points that will allow residents to have their shopping delivered right to their neighborhood.

anny

Using the digital booking tool provided by our collaborative partner anny, Vonovia is developing innovative service offerings for the use of common areas and the provision of services within the neighborhoods themselves.

LateBird

In partnership with the technology start-up LateBird, Vonovia is setting up the first unmanned neighborhood store, which residents can use to stock up on everyday groceries 24/7.

Pflegix

By working together with Pflegix, an online marketplace for care, support and everyday assistance, older tenants are given the help they need through the provision of housing-related services.

Ruhr University Bochum

Assisting with the Digitalization & Entrepreneurship Spring School at the RUB, where students developed business ideas in response to a problem in the topic area “For a better Future”.

ROCKETHOME

To make housing digital, Vonovia is working with Rockethome to test access systems that allow tenants to open doors using their smartphones. In view of the energy crisis, a smart home offering to help people save energy is also being created as part of this collaboration.

ROOMHERO

Joint development of three timeless standard packages for furnishing apartments for students and business tenants to respond to the furnished housing trend

We’re embarking on a joint mission for innovation!