How AGC Glass Europe Used Ecosystem Intelligence to Unlock Thin Glass Opportunities
AGC Glass Europe, the European glass division of AGC (Japan), manufactures, processes and distributes flat glass for construction, automotive and various other industries such as transport, solar energy and high-tech applications.
As the market leader in flat glass, AGC Glass Europe challenges itself to constantly reinvent glass, to explore potential applications and new technologies, and to improve its current product portfolio. In this way, glass places itself at the centre of technological revolutions.
Get a complete picture of the complex business ecosystem and discover new partners and business opportunities
One of the glass production facilities is located in Mol, Belgium. The furnace was rebuilt in 2019-2020, increasing production capacity and producing higher quality thin glass. The combined strengthand transparency of the ultra-thin glass and the high-precision capacity for laser cutting, grinding andcoating opened up completely new perspectives for industrial applications.
To achieve the business objectives in line with the capacity of the new furnace, it was imperative to create a bold, data-driven business plan for thin glass applications in a highly competitive market that is rapidly evolving due to constantly new emerging application domains.
The challenge for the group’s sales and marketing department was to assess the market potential of the main markets, to identify new market opportunities and to understand the dynamics of the value chains. The ambition was to get a complete picture of the complex business ecosystem and discover new partners and business opportunities.
The plan to stimulate business development had to be aligned on several axes:
• Development of existing customers,
• Activating opportunities in well-known markets in Europe and Turkey
• Discovering new opportunities in adjacent and new markets
Typical questions AGC Glass Europe wanted answers for
• Which business segments should we address first?
• What are the specific needs of the different business segments?
• Who are the key players and how is the value chain organised for the key segments?
• Who are the innovators in the market? What are the substitutes for thin glass?
Project approach
The project was carried out in collaboration between Glickman, Merluno, and DataScouts, who
joined forces to build collective intelligence that leads to business growth:
• Bringing the true purpose and value proposition to the surface
• Gathering market, competition and ecosystem information
• Analyzing the sweet spot, predicting and developing market potential
• Create a strategy that activates the market and increases customer lifetime value
The ecosystem mapping methodology
We focused on the root of the issues by conducting a thorough market scan to identify the potential applications of ultra-thin glass. During the intake meeting with AGC Glass Europe, we clarified the specific information needs for 16 potential application areas. Based on a literature study, the market opportunity for the various applications was determined based on market size, knowledge of the market and market growth parameters. Based on the initial market scan, the AGC Europe team decided to take a closer look at the four most prominent application domains. We described the end-to-end value chain for each segment, the key players, the market, and industry trends.
The underlying articles, academic publications, and patents related to thin glass and its applications were retrieved by DataScouts’ exploration platform from more than 70,000 data and information sources. As part of the research workflow, we started populating the DataScouts monitoring platform with competitors, potential customers, and valuable partners along the value chain. The automatically generated actor profiles contain information about the companies, their technologies and their role in the value chain.
The platform helped to provide an accurate and detailed picture of the value chain for the 4 main application domains of ultra-thin glass and the connections between the different technology and service providers along the value chain in an interactive way. Understanding the connections and dynamics between the players was critical to developing an efficient business development strategy. AGC Group, for example, has worked with Panasonic to develop a solution for building glazing. In addition, Panasonic is very active as a supplier to the automotive and aerospace sectors, so Panasonic can open doors to manufacturers in these two sectors for AGC Glass Europe.
The result - strategic agility
The report provided AGC Glass Europe:
• A detailed and granular understanding of the market opportunity for ultra-thin glass
• a detailed analysis of the “Customer Lifetime Value”
• An accurate representation of all relevant parties in the ecosystem for ultra-thin glass applications
• Validated assumptions and approaches to activate business development
The Collective Intelligence on their current customer base, the business ecosystem and the sweet
spot to go after provided the AGC Europe Team with practical next steps on how to evaluate and
