The Lufthansa Innovation Hub is using Feedly to define the future of strategic intelligence

THE CHALLENGE

Building a systematic approach to strategic intelligence

When Tino Klaehne first started working at the Lufthansa Innovation Hub (LIH) in 2017, things looked very different than they do today. The team was still in the early stages of developing their research processes, and their approach was ineffective and time-consuming. 

There was no easy way to store or collect interesting findings in a central location. They needed to develop a more systemic approach to strategic intelligence gathering, so they could scan the horizon and connect the dots more effectively. 

“At the time, our approach to research was really immature. People would Google a few keywords or visit a couple of websites when they had time here and there. Nothing was tracked,” Tino recalls. 

LIH needed an effective way to gather, analyze, and prioritize intelligence from millions of different sources into a single feed. They also needed a system to get alerted when key topics came up, without drowning in the noise of irrelevant data. “We wanted to really professionalize our approach. And we needed to find the right tools for the job.” 

THE SOLUTION

Using Feedly’s AI Engine to research and define the future of their market: Travel and Mobility Tech

LIH was able to go one step further than just professionalizing their intelligence-gathering: They have defined their arena at the intersection of travel, mobility, and tech (TNMT).

TNMT brings together traditionally-siloed interests that cover the entire ecosystem of products and services around the travel experience, from accommodation to space travel. 

By adopting Feedly’s AI engine, Leo to discover and research new market opportunities, LIH gathers and synthesizes intelligence that covers this entire category. They can shape, test, and validate hypotheses that will define the future of travel. 

“It’s strategically powerful to be able to define our own category and be the leaders in what we’re doing. And that’s where Feedly comes in. It allows us to create our own definitions and categories, beyond standard industry definitions. We can build everything around this TNMT model and see what we find there.” 

“Blurred Travel” and other future trends

When Tino and his team identify a new “fuzzy concept” or broader trend that they want to research and define, they set up a new Feedly Board on the topic and add relevant articles from other boards. From there, one of their analysts will define which keywords to track. They will build a Web Alert and gradually refine it, adding models and muting terms to filter out the noise. 

A Leo Web Alert that Tino and his team have created to track the “fuzzy concept” of Blurred Travel, combining existing Leo Models like “Bleisure travel”, “Remote work”, and the “Travel & Hospitality Industry”.

For example, LIH has coined the model of “Blurred Travel,” a shift they’re seeing as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, where business and leisure travel are increasingly merging. “It’s really hard to search for a term if you’re the one coining it,” Tino says. “To validate our hypotheses, we try to put different models together and look at what is coming through Feedly to see what is happening out there.”

An excerpt about Blurred Travel from a recent issue of LIH’s TNMT newsletter.

Tracking innovation via venture capital investments 

LIH also uses Web Alerts in Feedly to track venture capital investments in travel and mobility tech in order to predict how the industry will evolve. “Venture capital investments are one of our key metrics to determine innovation patterns,” Tino explains. “We want to know where smart people are putting a lot of money, and to understand why it’s happening. It’s a really good proxy indicator for us.” LIH publishes the only regular report with in-depth research on this topic. 

They also track over 3,000 startups to keep an eye out for investment and partnership opportunities with startups in related industries, like sustainable fuel, air taxis, and the creator economy.

LIH tracks funding events in the travel industry, because they tend to be an indicator of innovation patterns. Here, they’ve set up a Web Alert in Feedly so Leo will surface articles around these models. 

Integrating Feedly into their processes and tech stack

Part of what makes Feedly so effective for LIH is the way the team has been able to deeply integrate Feedly into their processes and the rest of their tech stack. 

Tino and the LIH team use Leo Models, a collection of machine learning models that continuously read millions of articles to analyze and tag key concepts in real-time. For example, they employ the Partnerships and Funding Leo Models to keep a close eye on partnerships that other airlines are forming with startups. This gives them a clearer sense of the direction their industry is heading and what other companies are prioritizing. 

LIH also uses Feedly as the jumping off point for kickstart new projects: Employees combine Leo Models in Web Alerts, which track and find relevant content continuously. Through the Web Alerts they’ve set up, the team finds useful content and regularly adds it to Boards. 

When a new project starts, employees search those Boards to see what’s been gathered on the topic and what information is already out there, curated by their team in Feedly. They’ll then create a new Board and connect it to the Slack channel for that project to keep all relevant research in one place. 

Company onboarding at LIH even includes a Feedly tutorial. “That’s how deeply we want Feedly to be embedded in our processes“ says Tino.

THE RESULTS

Faster, more insightful research that looks toward the future

Over the years, LIH’s reputation has grown. Their Travel & Mobility Tech newsletter, TNMT, now has over 10,000 subscribers, including both internal stakeholders and thousands of readers outside the company who rely on LIH’s analysis and research. Without Feedly, Tino estimates that intelligence gathering would take at least 3-5x longer, and wouldn’t be nearly as effective.

A recent issue of the TNMT newsletter, highlighting LIH’s research and analysis around investments into air-taxi startups.

Tino’s team is currently starting to build workflows that will make it easier for more teams to set up Feedly and other research tools to gather their own data independently. “We believe this has the potential to become a strategic intelligence layer for the entire Lufthansa Group, built around Feedly and a few other key tools,” Tino says. 

Feedly at the heart of their toolbox

LIH’s confidence in Feedly continues to grow, and they anticipate it continuing far into the future. They recently signed a three-year contract with Feedly so LIH can continue to build their future-focused processes with Feedly as their AI engine.

Even after analysts leave LIH, they continue to choose Feedly, Tino says. Feedly is such an integral part of the strategic intelligence tech stack that at least five former LIH employees have brought Feedly with them to new jobs. 

“Feedly is the core of our toolbox. We appreciate the close collaboration we have, and we really like the improvements and new features they are releasing. We feel like we’re progressing at the same time, together.”