Explore 10 million companies

Customer: Bundesministerium für Wirschaft und Umweltschutz via Prognos

Challenge: Social innovations in companies are of paramount importance as they enable organizations to address pressing societal challenges while simultaneously driving economic growth. By implementing novel solutions and practices, companies can tackle issues such as poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation, fostering positive change at both local and global levels. However, measuring the impact of these social innovations poses a significant challenge for policy makers. Policy makers struggle to quantify the implementation of social innovations, as they require comprehensive evaluation frameworks that go beyond traditional indicators. Consequently, the difficulty in measuring social innovations underscores the need for policymakers to adopt innovative approaches that capture the full breadth of their societal benefits.

Solution: ISTARI.AI pioneers new ways to measure innovation in business: Innovative companies are identified with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). For this purpose, ISTARI developed so-called webAI innovation agents. These are self-learning systems that have been trained to recognise the websites of companies with social innovations. The innovation agents can thus identify innovative and socially innovative companies in different economic sectors.

Impact:

• For the first time, social innovations in companies can be analysed on a large scale. More than one million companies in Germany have been analysed and benchmarked with the webAI.
• Industries and regions with high and low shares of innovation-driving companies could be identified.
• Active innovation fields such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and circular economy and their central actors could be observed and described.
• Results can be the basis for further research and targeted, data-based policy measures.

Customer: AI Denmark

Challenge: AI is an indispensable technology with far-reaching implications across various sectors, making it crucial for policy makers to be well-informed about its adoption within companies in their country. AI has the potential to enhance productivity, improve decision-making processes, and drive innovation, thereby contributing to economic growth and competitiveness. Furthermore, understanding the landscape of AI implementation allows policy makers to identify gaps, create supportive frameworks, and implement regulations that balance technological advancement with ethical considerations and societal well-being. However, measuring the extent of AI implementation poses a significant challenge, as there is no central register for this. AI applications are diverse and can be embedded within complex systems, making it difficult to accurately capture the scope and impact of its use.

Solution: Capturing the use of AI within companies by screening their websites is a highly effective approach to creating a comprehensive list of businesses that have implemented AI in their products and services. Websites serve as public-facing platforms where companies often highlight their technological capabilities and innovations. By carefully examining website content, including product descriptions, service offerings, and case studies, one can gather valuable insights into the integration of AI. This approach allows for a broad and diverse coverage of companies across various industries and sectors, enabling policymakers to have a holistic understanding of AI adoption. Furthermore, website screening provides real-time information and can be regularly updated, ensuring that the list remains current and accurate.

Impact:

• First comprehensive coverage of Danish companies with AI adoption.
• Context (field of application) of AI adoption captured.
• High regional resolution allows comparison between regions and with other nations.
• Up-to-date and easily updated follow-up analyses possible.

Customer: Bundesministerium für Wirschaft und Umweltschutz via ZEW Mannheim

Challenge: The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown measures had an enormous impact on the economy due to their unprecedented nature and the disruption caused to various sectors. The sudden and widespread implementation of lockdowns led to the closure of businesses, supply chain disruptions, reduced consumer spending, and increased unemployment rates. The fluidity of the situation made it challenging to assess the impact on short notice. The crisis was unforeseen, catching policymakers and economists off guard, resulting in ad hoc reactions and measures to mitigate the economic fallout. The dynamic nature of the pandemic made it difficult to predict the duration and severity of the crisis, further complicating the assessment of its impact. The lack of historical precedents for such a global crisis made it challenging to rely on traditional forecasting models, requiring constant monitoring, analysis, and adjustment of policies to address the evolving situation effectively.

Solution: At ISTARI.AI, we developed a live web monitoring solution aimed at assessing the impact of lockdown measures on firms in Germany. Our innovative approach involved scanning all company websites in the country twice per week, allowing us to closely monitor their communication and changes over time. Leveraging advanced language models, we were able to analyze the text on these websites, gaining valuable insights into the evolving situation and its effects on businesses. By tracking the language used, we could identify shifts in messaging, business operations, and customer engagement, providing a comprehensive understanding of how companies were adapting to the challenging circumstances. This real-time monitoring approach enabled us to capture the fluidity of the crisis, providing policymakers and stakeholders with up-to-date information to inform decision-making and develop targeted interventions to support affected businesses.

Impact:

• Insights into the communication of all German companies regarding the pandemic, updated several times a week.
• Estimation of the impact of the pandemic and lockdown measures on individual companies, sectors and regions.
• Follow-up analyses have shown that our live analyses correlate with the credit ratings of companies, which only become available one year later.

Detailed results of the project can be found in this publication.

Customer: Newsload

Challenge: Companies from rural areas often lack digital skills, resulting in the use of simple or outdated website technologies. To assist these companies in improving their digital presence, our customer aims to offer a service that helps develop their website and online visibility. However, manually researching company websites to create a comprehensive list of businesses with low website technology skills can be a time-consuming process.

Solution: We provided invaluable assistance to our customer by conducting a comprehensive scanning of all websites belonging to German firms. Through this process, we meticulously analyzed the website technology stack of each company across 100 categories and thousands of individual technologies. This extensive analysis saved our customer an immense amount of time, sparing them from the tedious task of manually researching and evaluating each website. By leveraging our automated scanning and analysis capabilities, we efficiently generated a detailed overview of the website technology skills of German businesses, enabling our customer to focus their efforts on developing tailored services to address the specific needs of companies with low website technology skills.

Impact:

• Detailed website technology stack analysis for hundreds of thousands of German companies.
• Ready to use lead lists for our client in ultra-high regional and sectoral resolution.
• Allows our client to fully concentrate on targeted customer acquisition.

Customer: German Region

Challenge: Regions often face challenges in keeping track of the activities of companies within their boundaries, including how these companies network with each other and with external firms. The lack of centralized information makes it difficult for regions to have a comprehensive understanding of their local business ecosystem. However, it is crucial for regions to have this knowledge as it enables them to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for collaboration and growth. Furthermore, by comparing their regional economy to peer regions, regions can gain insights into their internationalization efforts and future challenges. This comparison allows regions to benchmark their performance, learn from best practices, and develop strategies to enhance their competitiveness on a global scale. Assessing their position among peer regions helps regions prioritize investments, foster innovation, and implement policies that drive sustainable economic development and prosperity.

Solution: We leveraged the websites of companies in a specific region to identify hyperlink connections between regional firms, allowing us to proxy their inter and intra-company network. By analyzing these connections using ISTARI webAI, we gained valuable insights into the network dynamics and collaboration patterns within the region. Furthermore, we compared this regional network, consisting of millions of connections, with a similarly sized peer region. This comparison provided our customer’s region with a benchmark to assess their own network strength and identify areas of improvement. The analysis enabled us to derive valuable insights on regional connectivity, potential partnerships, and opportunities for collaboration, contributing to the strategic development and growth of our customer’s region.

Impact:

• Completely new and up-to-date insights into networking within the economy of our client region.
• Performed one-to-one comparison with peer region and identified relative strengths and weaknesses.
• Identified regionally, nationally and internationally oriented companies in the client region.
• Basis for new approaches in regional business development.