Infiniti Lab: where a carmaker drives ideas to become businesses of the future

Infiniti’s accelerator programmes aims to nurture innovative firms that will help the carmaker create new products and services to meet aggressive growth targets

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Dane Fisher, who heads the Infiniti Lab says the Lab has modified its work to address the carmaker’s strategic goals more directly with a focus on technology centring on mobility solutions. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 9:15am, 10 Jun 2018Updated: 8:22pm, 3 Jul 2018

Having an innovative company is the dream of most top executives. Three years ago, Dane Fisher, who was managing director for Infiniti Asia and Oceania, approached his boss, Infiniti global president Roland Krueger, about setting up a corporate accelerator programme as a way to achieve that. That programme is now known as Infiniti Lab, based in Hong Kong along with Infiniti’s global headquarters.

The idea is straightforward: engage start-ups for a time-limited mentorship/investment-training programme, and then partner or invest in those that best help create new products or services. Yet three years on, Fisher has found that it’s more complicated than that.

Three rounds of accelerator programmes have been conducted in Hong Kong, aimed at companies in the early stages of development. The Lab has also added start-up weekends for potential entrepreneurs and integration programmes for advanced companies looking to scale up.

Of the 37 companies that have been through the accelerator programme in Hong Kong, Fisher says Infiniti is working with nine. The Hong Kong accelerator welcomes start-ups from around the world; through a “hub and spoke” approach in which Infiniti accelerators in Toronto, Taiwan, Singapore and Beijing supply potential start-ups for the Hong Kong programme. A new accelerator is planned this summer for Dubai, and a new programme subsequently for the US.

Ronald Krueger, president of Infiniti Motor, poses for a photograph at his HK office in Wan Chai. 02JUN15

The need for creative thinking at Infiniti – Nissan Motor’s luxury car division – is growing, thanks to some aggressive targets. By 2021, Infiniti will only produce electric vehicles. In addition, it aims to have 50 per cent of sales transacted through e-commerce by 2025, from none at present. Infiniti also wants to triple its business volume in China by 2022. In January 2018, The Alliance (the governing entity for Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi) established a US$1 billion Alliance Venture Capital Fund, which Fisher thinks will help the Lab attract even better start-ups.