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How Saipem Innovation Strategy

Embraces the Holonic-Virtual

Paradigm

In the current market environment, marked by strong competition and
uncertainty regarding prospects for development, innovation is a strategic
lever for strengthening and consolidating the competitive positioning of
companies for tackling future challenges. Saipem’s innovation lab, aimed
at increasing productivity and discovering new value propositions, is one
of the building blocks of the company’s innovation strategy. While 2017
was the year dedicated to the Proofs-of-concept, 2018 must be the
Scale-up one. The paper details how Saipem wants to achieve this
transformative target.

Antonio Careddu, Andrea Boscacci, Luca Pagani, Saipem

he oil & gas industry is experiencing a recovery and an increase in world population, the entire Fig.1 – New
transformation of its complex system. industry is wondering how to make the search, the stakeholders’
The period ranging from the year 2000 transformation and the exploitation of fossil sources expectations
to 2014 was characterized by colossal sustainable, thus ensuring that the two billion more
investments, driven by high oil prices, in people who will be inhabiting this earth, as well as the
T what were at times difficult current population of 7.5 billion, will have water, food
environments, such as deep water, that put major and well-being, and at the same time a planet that is
general contractors to the test with challenging projects. livable and clean.
Almost all the mega-projects, however, incurred extra- It is for these reasons that Saipem undertook a number
budgetary expenses and significant delays in their of analyses. The first of these concerned productivity.
execution. Unlike other industries (automotive, aerospace,
The global crisis of aggregate demand, large plants logistics), productivity indicators such as hours/
entering into production and, above all, the development equipment or tonnes per worker in the period of time
of technologies associated with fracking in North have worsened.
America, have led to a temporary abundance in the The second analysis focused on the impact of digital
supply of hydrocarbons, and the subsequent collapse transformation on processes and methods. Whereas in
in prices. Turnover for contractors and service providers field engineering and geology the use of calculation
have fallen, with serious consequences for employment. systems has led to valuable results, yet to be confirmed
Although aware that the demand for hydrocarbons will on a number of significant discoveries, there is a feeling
continue to be sustained thanks to the economic that relating to engineering and construction we have

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