TRIESTE, Italy – Leading premium coffee segment company illycaffè has teamed up with Innovation Foundries, the company responsible for the Italia Innovation Program, to announce the creation of illy Foundry, a corporate start-up conceived to analyse the experience of coffee lovers around the world in order to develop new services and digital business models.
Through illy Foundry, illycaffè is targeting technology development and an acceleration of its business by leveraging the company’s multi-decade-long heritage of industrial innovation in its industry.
Andrea Illy, Chairman and CEO of illycaffè, explains: “illy Foundry is a new creative unit of young international talent and top players from engineering, IT and design.”
Operating between San Francisco and Italy, the corporate start-up has begun a selection process for ten programmers, designers and business developers with international experience and an entrepreneurial spirit to creatively and operationally develop their own projects. Prospective candidates should apply through the foundry.illy.com website.
Over the last few months, illycaffè and Innovation Foundries have been working with top US colleges and major hi-tech multinationals to develop and implement a strategy for global open innovation that leverages international best practice.
Notably, illycaffè is the first company in Italy to adopt Amazon Dash Button technology, which allows consumers in the US to order and receive illycaffè products in just one day with the simple press of a Wi-Fi button.
To involve young talent, the Italian company has launched Coffee-Hack, a program for interacting with innovators and start-ups worldwide.
The program was initially rolled out in Fall 2015 in Silicon Valley and at Harvard, before being extended to Georgetown University in Washington, and in Italy to the Google I/O 2016 Extended – Fabrica and the Italia Innovation Program.
