“It’s important to differentiate between invention and innovation: invention is something new, while innovation is something new and useful—so applying an invention to something that actually solves a problem for people.”
Passionate about innovation and start-ups, Pietro Bianchetta is currently an Innovation coach at Zest Group. He shares with us his views on the start-up world, the substance of innovation, the importance of sustainability and the challenges of shared mobility.
10 min read
Why don’t we kick off by talking about your career background, a journey through innovation and startups?
One could say my career started at the Politecnico di Torino, because even then I felt a bit of a calling towards innovation. I graduated in Management Engineering with a focus on Innovation. In my first experience, I worked with others to manage the startup selection process. It was an accelerator inspired by Y Combinator, purely based on investing in startups and providing mentorship: the business model was to achieve exits from startups.
It didn’t end well because the founders split up, and from there, I started my journey in Innovation Consulting, first in Turin with The Doers, which was acquired by Digital Magics, and now with the various mergers I am the Innovation Manager at Zest, where I coach startups and innovation teams within companies, design innovation processes, and structure the innovation governance of large corporations.
“Volvero is doing something very important: it’s trying to increase people’s mobility without using additional resources.”
So you really know your way around startups.
I might not be the top expert on startups, but I’ve helped several of them in their validation journey. My focus regarding startups is therefore more on coaching, particularly during the acceleration phase, which focuses more on validating ideas—especially business models – and less on financial aspects. I primarily define myself as an Innovation Coach rather than a full-fledged startup expert.
What is the startup world like, from your experience?
I see increasing awareness, as the startup world is becoming more and more structured from a methodological point of view. I’ve had the privilege of coaching several startups in the acceleration program I coordinated, the CTE for the city of Turin (where I also encountered volvero), and I noticed how startups are becoming more mature. They know what it takes to create real value and make themselves truly attractive to investors.
In the past, something I like to call “the theatre of innovation” was more prevalent. Innovation was more about storytelling than real substance—real projects that could find their value in the market. It was more of a series of events, grants, a bit self-referential. Now, I see startups are more focused on solving real problems for people.
So, how do you interpret innovation in 2024?
Now there’s more awareness of actual innovation, both at the startup level and the corporate level. The movement around innovation cannot be confined to the startup realm: it’s a broader understanding within the system, including startups, companies, and investors, who recognize the value of innovation and the role startups play in driving it.
It is increasingly detaching from the concept of marketing. There used to be more confusion between innovation and marketing (communicating something as innovative to customers even if that thing lacked real market validation). But now, I’m pleased to see that companies are becoming serious about innovation. Many are creating Innovation Offices, which are vertical structures dedicated to innovation who collaborate with startups. This, in my view, gives startups a significant advantage because they are understood by corporate counterparts who, in the end, could also become clients or even investors for acquisitions or exits.
“You can’t talk about innovation in 2024 without including the concept of sustainability.”
Out of curiosity, what do you think are the two main trends in innovation today?
Here, it’s important to differentiate between invention and innovation: invention is something new, while innovation is something new and useful—so applying an invention to something that actually solves a problem for people.
If we speak of inventions, we can’t overlook artificial intelligence at the moment, which is transforming many sectors, concepts, and paradigms. For example, it was once thought that the jobs most replaceable by technology would be the more manual ones, but it turns out the opposite is true. On the other hand, innovations are all the applications of AI to solve people’s problems.
The other trend is everything related to solving people’s problems by making processes more sustainable. You can’t talk about innovation in 2024 without including the concept of sustainability. Volvero fits well into this sustainability narrative because it solves a mobility problem for people without creating new products, thereby conserving resources.
These, in my opinion, are the two major trends in innovation today: AI, increasingly applied to real-world problems, and sustainability—so the will of drastically improving the sustainability of what we do today, which technically also turns into an improvement of what we do today.
You have already mentioned a bit, but we are still curious to hear your thoughts on volvero.
Volvero is doing something very important: it’s trying to increase people’s mobility without using additional resources. This fits perfectly into the sustainability narrative, which is essential in 2024. These, in my opinion, are volvero’s strengths—it is a startup focused on addressing the needs of 2024’s consumers and the future.
That’s an important point, not using additional resources. It deserves more thought.
To make the services we use more sustainable, we must start by acknowledging that there are many underutilized resources, and the car is perhaps the most underutilized asset in the Western world. Additionally, from a social perspective, with the decline in purchasing power, it’s becoming increasingly difficult and uneconomical to own a car. I’ve always thought that owning a car was a poor investment because you spend a lot on something that depreciates very quickly. We should move from ownership to rental or sharing, allowing an underutilized resource to be used more without creating new resources or consuming energy to produce new ones. This expands the number of people who can benefit from the resources that already exist. Volvero has all the right qualities to be a long-lasting entrepreneurial innovation project, both for today’s world and the future.
How do you personally experience sustainable mobility?
I live in a small town, which forces me to travel 90% of the time using private transport, so sustainable mobility for me would be associated with carpooling or, in the future, perhaps something that allows a community’s cars to be shared for transportation needs. In different settings, I think that sharing and public transport are becoming increasingly important, so I try to use public transport where I can and solutions for shared mobility. These seem to be the mobility solutions heading towards the future.
“Innovation is about solving real problems for people, without being tied to the idea of failure.”
Perhaps in the present, in Italy, some of these solutions, like car sharing, are still viewed with scepticism?
Yes, Italy is still somewhat behind compared to other countries. One of the reasons, which is talked about too little, is the decline in purchasing power. This presses much of the population to focus on basic needs, like finding and keeping a job, leaving less room to try new things or take small risks. The socio-economic situation in Italy in recent years hasn’t been conducive to innovation, as people have more immediate and essential priorities.
We could end on this very valid point, but I’d like to ask if you have a favorite quote or saying?
There is one that, among the many I’ve read, has stuck with me. It’s a quote from Aristotle: “If there’s a solution, why worry? If there’s no solution, why worry?”. We can connect this to what I said earlier about innovation and how it helps solve people’s problems. If I find a real market problem and can solve it, then I’m on the right track—there’s no need to worry. But if I don’t find a real market problem or the problem is unsolvable, I move on and look for a real one – again, there’s no need to worry. Innovation is about solving real problems for people, without being tied to the idea of failure.
Alice Franzon @volvero
