Innovation Marathon: Turning AI curiosity into action

When we kicked off the Innovation Marathon a few weeks ago, our goal was clear: Help our clients explore the potential of AI in a way that’s fast, focused and grounded in practical business challenges. We set it up in small teams with clear goals. We planned for eight weeks to build something valuable together.

Now that we’re halfway through, the momentum is unmistakable.

From curiosity to real-world impact

Each participating client brought a unique challenge to the table. Some focused on internal efficiency. Others looked to improve decision-making or enhance the customer experience. In the first few weeks, we’ve moved rapidly from ideas to working prototypes.

What’s making this possible? Short cycles, fast feedback, and a shared willingness to build, learn and adapt. This is AI innovation in motion, driven by clarity and intent. 

Here’s a glimpse of what’s taking shape: 

• For a leading cash transit provider, we’re reimagining how they listen to and act on customer feedback, bringing together structured and unstructured data to better understand client needs and respond in real time.

• In agriculture, we’re using AI to reduce claims by predicting the quality of strawberry batches early on. By turning environmental signals into quality forecasts, we can avoid mismatches between expected and actual quality, helping to better match batches to the right buyers, plan inspections more efficiently and prevent lower-quality produce from reaching clients with higher expectations.

• For a global dairy trading company, we’ve created a virtual team of AI-powered analysts to monitor and summarize market intelligence, providing traders with a digestible, always-updated knowledge base.

• For a leading automotive brand, we’re helping them better understand who’s most likely to book a test drive (with it being the key indicator for conversion), enabling more timely, relevant engagement across the customer journey. 

These use cases combine Valtech’s internal accelerators, deep industry knowledge, close collaboration with clients, and the capabilities of platform partners such as Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and Adobe.

Why this approach works

We’ve learned that progress happens quickly when the focus is sharp and the ambition is grounded.

By tackling one meaningful challenge at a time, teams move with purpose. The format pushes everyone to align on key questions early: 

• "What are we solving?" 
• "What does success look like?"
• "What can we meaningfully build in a few weeks?"
• "How will it create value for the business?"  

Perhaps the most important question we’re hearing now is, "What happens next?"

With several AI proofs of concept already in development, the conversation is shifting toward scale, integration and long-term impact. This is exactly where we want to be.

What matters most  

Clients are working side by side with peers and valtechies, experimenting with real tools in real time and gaining the confidence that comes from hands-on learning, while having support from Data & AI experts.

Looking ahead: The grand finale on June 26

We’ll wrap up this first edition of the Innovation Marathon on June 26 in Amsterdam.

Each client team will present their solution, reflect on the journey and share what’s next. The day will also feature insights from a special guest speaker, with plenty of time to connect, ask questions and explore how a given approach might work in your own context.

If you’re looking to adopt AI in a practical, focused and results-driven way, we'd love for you to join us.

Request your seat now

Test drive is the key indicator for conversion. We know it will increase the likelihood of buying a car

We’ve communicated a lot about how we learn together as a group. Clients inspire each other, help each other with their learnings. Big part of this. Also we provide valtechies without experience in AI to join and we team up with the Data & AI experts to learn.

It’s 100% true, this is a commercial driven program. But I don’t feel comfortable to say it like that. The goal is to help our clients to get started, not just with an POC, but really help them to embed this in their thinking/way of working/optimising processes.