Forward: Open Innovation Platform Qorus-NTT DATA Innovation in Insurance Awards 2026

Corporate innovation teams face a structural paradox: the people expected to drive transformation often spend a significant share of their time on administrative work instead of innovation itself. Spreadsheet tracking, manual follow-ups, fragmented reporting, and disconnected stakeholder coordination slow down execution and reduce strategic impact.

Forward was built to solve this problem at its root. It is a purpose-built, end-to-end platform for corporate open innovation management that transforms scattered innovation activity into a structured, scalable, and measurable operating model.

The platform serves as the single source of truth across the full innovation lifecycle. It enables organizations to identify and manage startups, launch targeted challenges based on real business unit needs, evaluate opportunities through structured rubrics, track pilots with defined KPIs, and create visibility on what should scale. By connecting these phases in one integrated system, Forward ensures innovation is not handled as an ad-hoc activity, but as a repeatable corporate capability.

Forward also addresses a critical gap in the market. Existing solutions usually cover only one part of the process, such as entity management, challenge intake, or project tracking. Forward integrates the full journey in a single environment, including dedicated portals for external applicants and program-level analytics for leadership. The result is stronger alignment between business needs and startup solutions, reduced operational friction, and a more effective path from discovery to value creation.