Cognizant opens new Collaboratory in London to help business leaders create digital economy products

The Collaboratory is an interactive work space that brings together a multi-disciplinary team of social scientists, design thinkers, creative technologists, engineers, and strategists to help organisations transform and reimagine their business, operating, and technology models for the digital era.

The London Collaboratory in Paddington, Cognizant’s second in Europe, is part of a global network of Cognizant Collaboratories – currently in Amsterdam, New York, and Melbourne – and an extended innovation ecosystem of more than a dozen digital labs around the globe, including: Barcelona, Spain; Toronto, Canada; Rapperswil, Switzerland; and Boulder, Colorado, in the United States.

Interdisciplinary teams of strategists, designers, technologists, data scientists and human sciences experts will work in the Collaboratory side-by-side with partners and clients from throughout the United Kingdom and Europe to envision and prototype innovative digital products and services.

As part of the opening ceremony on Thursday, Cognizant will use a series of hands-on workshops to demonstrate how it will help clients derive value from digital technologies like the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented reality.

The demonstrations include technology, focusing first, however, on human insights that drive successful technology engagement. With human insights as the foundation, the demonstrations illustrate the client journey, beginning in the Collaboratory, to help move their business from “doing digital” to “being digital.”

“Deutsche Telekom has been working with Cognizant at its Collaboratory in Amsterdam for several months, and we found it to be the perfect environment for conducting ideation sessions, synthesising research results, creating prototypes and business models and jointly finalising solution proposals,” said Thomas Wind, Vice President at Deutsche Telekom. “The creative atmosphere in the Collaboratory, the structured approach to innovation and the interdisciplinary team with shared expertise from both Deutsche Telekom and Cognizant really made a difference and is helping to drive significant advancements. I expect those utilising the Collaboratory in London will find it just as beneficial as we did.”

“Across all industries, businesses today are operating in a fast-changing market environment fuelled by many digital trends, where agility and accelerated innovation cycles are key to survival and future success. We view Cognizant’s expanding network of Collaboratory facilities as a new client engagement platform for digital innovation, addressing an important need today of both business and technology executives,” said Michael Versace, Global Research Director at independent market intelligence and advisory firm IDC.

“Our data shows that business executives are increasing their demands and reliance on partners like Cognizant for not only industry, functional, and digital technology expertise, but also for new ways of tapping into this expertise in a collaborative way, which we’ve seen produce great innovation, more value and less risk for clients,” said he.

“We have learned that success in the digital economy means reimagining products and experiences at speed and scale, but just as important, beginning that innovation process with a clear understanding of customer behaviour,” said Sanjiv Gossain, Senior Vice President and Head of Cognizant Digital Business, Europe.

“Our Collaboratory in London, as well as others around the world, combine human-centric design with digital technologies to enable clients to deliver engaging new experiences for their customers. Cognizant integrates these elements in a space designed to encourage fresh thinking and collaboration as we innovate and co-create securely and quickly to shorten the time-to-value – our new business imperative at the dawn of the digital economy,” he said.