The CTT Innovation Management Model, embodied by “+ Inovação by CTT” (CTT innovation management program), is based on several pillars, one of them being interaction with startups – agile and highly skilled entities strongly focused on the accelerated research and development of innovative solutions, products or services that leverage existing offers or create new ones, or both. However, the goal is always the same: increase organisations’ revenue and/or reduce costs.
At CTT, the interaction above referred takes place through 1520 Startup Program, which includes several activities to identify and/or attract startups aligned with CTT’s strategy and objectives.
The startups CTT is looking for should be very effective when testing completely innovative approaches to tackle existing problems or building something entirely new, and very often out of the box, nevertheless with an unquestionable fit with CTT’s offer.
CTT has a good track record of interacting with startups and it works intensively, at various levels, with several other entities, namely startup incubators and accelerators.
Moreover, organisations such as CTT – that invest with increasing confidence in a wide plethora of technologies (today, because digital transformation is the order of the day, with more intensity than ever before) – are indeed very attractive for startups, precisely because of what they offer: broad scope and greater complexity.
Yet identifying startups, that is, ones that truly matter to CTT, is an arduous and time-consuming process involving research and analysis of dozens, hundreds or more startups to find a handful of potentially interesting ones. After reaching this milestone, there is still the need for further analysis, testing and piloting before, and where applicable, the ‘ok’ for production is given. In brief, it’s an intense “mining” process to find a hidden gem that most often involves going through various types of hardships to reach the stars – “per aspera ad astra”.
