EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

RHI Magnesita is the global leader in the refractory industry and ranks among the most innovative players in its industry worldwide. In its effort to stay the global number one in the extremely fast-changing refractory industry, five R&D hubs and centers on four continents utilize existing resources and explore innovative technologies for the future.

Goal

As innovation projects are highly complex in this industry, RHI Magnesita needs intermediaries to assist them in finding and cooperating with the ideal innovation providers. Intermediaries are the mediating entity between innovation seekers, such as RHI Magnesita, and innovation providers, such as innovative start-ups. Intermediaries close the internal knowledge gap in innovation projects, create synergies with experts in the market and make breakthrough innovations possible. There is a vast number of intermediaries in the market, offering various and differentiated products or services. Thus, the goal of this project was to create a structured process to identify, evaluate and select the most suitable intermediary for RHI Magnesita’s innovation projects.

Methodology

To gain a profound understanding of the intermediary market and the status quo of research, a first in-depth content analysis of more than 30 academic papers was conducted. Subsequently, 15 qualitative expert interviews with innovation managers in the refractory and analogous industries were carried out to analyze the best practices of innovative industries and identify high-potential intermediaries which could be attractive for RHI Magnesita. Then, the results of the in-depth desk research and the best-practice analysis were synthesized. Eventually, by implementing an incremental feedback loop process and working closely with RHI Magnesita, a highly detailed stage-gate process was designed. In addition, the necessary evaluation sheets and weighted scoreboards were created to enable the prompt testing and implementation of the process with all its detailed frameworks.

Results

As a result, RHI Magnesita was provided with an in-depth stage-gate process, consisting of two main phases, namely a general intermediary sourcing and a project-specific selection phase. Each overarching phase comprises multiple stages and gates to filter intermediaries according to their general offers and their project-specific expertise, experience, value propositions, and cultural fit. The gates depict in-depth quantitative and qualitative evaluations which can be easily adapted according to the requirements of each innovation project. In the end, this process enables RHI Magnesita to find the ideal innovation intermediary for their highly specific innovation projects. The definition of the various intermediary types also allows RHI Magnesita to create a sophisticated typology according to the newest standards. In addition to that, best practices were gathered, and a list of the most promising innovation intermediaries was compiled.

Cooperation Partner

• RHI Magnesita GmbH
  Kranichberggasse 6
  A-1120, Vienna Austria
  rhimagnesita.com/de/

Contact Person

• Juan de Rosenzweig
  Juan.Rosenzweig@RHIMagnesita.com

Student Team

• Anatol Schmidt

• David Leibovitz

• Marcel Sabotin

• Nikolaus Wehofer

• Julia Wensauer

• Sarah Mähr

Project Manager

• Tuong-Vi Sophie Quach, M.A.

• Dipl.-Kff. Tina Marie Monelyon