In the summer, MHP opened the MHPLab in Berlin. The slogan of the new location puts MHP's claim in a nutshell: "Enabling you to shape the future". On an area of 1,250 square meters, several interdisciplinary teams – from consultants and designers to gamification specialists and data scientists – are working on practical approaches for successful digitalization. "Basically, all companies know that they have to deal with the theme of digital transformation. For many, however, this is still difficult at present – they cannot keep up with the highly dynamic pace. For them, the MHPLab is a trendsetter and implementation partner," says Dr. Andreas Hirning, partner at MHP and head of the Lab.
The MHP "Lab as a Service" offer is thus aimed just as much at established companies as at innovative start-ups. Dr. Jan Wehinger, Senior Manager at MHP for Digital Innovations and Frontloading: "Corporations, large companies, as well as medium-sized companies, are very good at manufacturing and putting products on the market efficiently. However, an environment in which new ideas can emerge is lacking. With start-ups, it's precisely the other way round. They are extremely creative and target-oriented where finding new business models is concerned. The challenge for them is to scale these business models successfully. With our 20 years of experience in industry, we can help in both cases – and bring together our findings from various sectors."
Specifically, in the MHPLab it's like this: Companies use the entire infrastructure of the Lab for a certain period – from sprints of one month to many years of permanent presence. In addition to the actual rooms and the specific know-how of the consultants, this also includes the technical equipment. A special feature in this connection is the highly scalable MHPCloud. This offers a system environment designed in accordance with industrial standards, in which new solutions can be developed and tested under real conditions on the basis of DevOps.
Collaboration in the Lab mostly starts with developing ideas for digital business models – insofar as they are not already available. The leading procedure in this connection is Design Thinking. The new approaches are then substantiated in the form of so-called Minimal Viable Products (MVP), which in the next step leads to prototypes. At the end of the process, solutions – from the app to the IoT application – should have been created that can then be used in industry. Dr. Andreas Hirning: "But our claim is not only that we can realize individual business models with our customers. In the best case, we succeed in giving the employees who spend time in our Lab a digital mindset that they then take back to their companies."
So far, two German car producers have pitched their tents in the MHPLab – indeed permanently and for several years. Furthermore, MHP is working together with the Canadian start-up Maluuba. Dr. Jan Wehinger: "Maluuba has a deep-learning-based key technology with which machines can learn to interpret human language. We are now helping to develop concrete applications from this technology – applications that bring real benefits to companies and which can thus also be sold.
