Acquisition expands Accenture’s front-end
innovation and analytics capabilities to help clients introduce
transformational products and services
Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has acquired Happen, a privately owned
innovation firm that uses proprietary methods, frameworks and
digital tools to help clients generate new ideas, products and
services that drive business growth. Terms of the acquisition were
not disclosed.
Happen is headquartered in London, with additional offices in
Amsterdam and New Jersey, and has a team who possess a wide range
of innovation skills, including strategy, design, ideation, insight
and research.
Since its establishment in 2007, Happen has helped companies
primarily across the consumer goods, food & beverage, retail
and life science industries. The firm’s key skills include consumer
insights where teams identify new opportunities and determine how
an organization can commercialize them; and product and service
innovation. Happen has developed many technology frameworks, tools
and methods — such as StarMaker™, F.I.R.E.®, Asset-Out™ and
Vision-Led™ — to help organizations grow and transform, including
award-winning technology that can track and measure consumer
emotions at scale.
For instance, the firm helped a healthcare company use insights
gleaned from consumers to overhaul a strategy to market cough
medicine; the new positioning took the product to the number two
spot in the U.K., with one pack sold every 10 seconds. Happen also
helped a leading grocery chain map how people move around its
stores; making small tweaks to the customer journey more than
doubled revenue from breakfast cereals and increased snack
purchases by 40%.
Happen’s employees will join the innovation practice within
Accenture’s Products Industry X.0 business, which helps clients use
advanced digital technologies to reinvent their products, services
and business models to achieve higher efficiency and growth in
operations across the enterprise — including design and
engineering, manufacturing, supply chain management, logistics and
customer support.
“Bringing data-driven intelligence to clients’ decision-making,
Happen helps companies tailor innovative products, services and
experiences to create customer-centric businesses,” said Eric
Schaeffer, a senior managing director at Accenture who leads its
Products Industry X.0 practice and Supply Chain & Operations
consulting practice. “The acquisition further enhances the
analytics, design and engineering capabilities we use to help
clients deliver relevance at scale to a marketplace of millions of
individuals.”
Mark Cowan, co-founder of Happen, said, “Joining Accenture will
enable us to scale our offerings and capabilities and deliver our
services to an even greater range of clients. We’re excited to
become part of one of the world’s truly great companies.”
Matt Prebble, a managing director at Accenture and head of its
Products practice in the U.K. and Ireland, said, “The acquisition
of Happen underscores our commitment to innovation. We continue to
invest in the U.K. and Europe to grow our talent, creating new
opportunities to work on transformative and disruptive projects and
to help our clients apply the latest digital technologies to drive
their product innovation and growth agendas.”
Happen is the latest in a series of acquisitions Accenture has
made recently to expand its Industry X.0 product innovation
capabilities. These include the acquisition last month of Pragsis
Bidoop, a Spanish company with expertise in big data, artificial
intelligence and advanced analytics, and its acquisition in March
of ?What If!, an innovation firm that uses an
experimentation-driven approach to help clients incubate new
products, services, business models and organizational cultures.
Other acquisitions in recent years to drive product innovation
capabilities for Industry X.0 include those of hardware engineering
firm Mindtribe, strategic design consultancy designaffairs, and
product design and innovation firm Altitude.
About Accenture
Accenture is a leading global professional services company,
providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy,
consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched
experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries
and all business functions — underpinned by the world’s largest
delivery network — Accenture works at the intersection of business
and technology to help clients improve their performance and create
sustainable value for their stakeholders. With 492,000 people
serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives
innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us
at www.accenture.com.
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Tara Burns Accenture +44 7850 435 158
tara.burns@accenture.com
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