STMicroelectronics has been named a Top 100 Global Innovators 2025 by Clarivate™ for the seventh time. The annual list from Clarivate, a global leader in providing transformative intelligence, identifies the world’s leading organizations shaping the future of innovation.

Alessandro Cremonesi, Executive Vice President, Chief Innovation Officer and General Manager of the System Research and Applications organization of STMicroelectronics shares his thoughts on successfully developing a network of tech ecosystems to initiate, develop and sustain innovation in a highly competitive global semiconductor market.

How does ST innovate?
ST is at the center of a network of global innovation ecosystems that we nurture to accelerate global sustainable growth by enabling smarter mobility, more efficient power and energy management, edge AI, and the wide-scale deployment of cloud-connected autonomous things.

Our innovation model is based on a balance between internal and cooperative initiatives that guarantee continuous capability to identify, develop, attract, absorb and create innovation.

Innovation at ST is led by the Innovation Office which provides a framework for accelerating innovation processes and searching for disruptive technologies and applications. Its mission is to create both internal and external innovation opportunities by connecting emerging market and technology trends with our internal technology expertise and by facilitating knowledge sharing between both ST employees and external innovators, including activities with startups, academia, and customers ranging from midsized to global tech leaders.

Inside ST, innovation happens through the concerted efforts between our Technology R&D, Systems Research & Applications (SRA), Product Groups and Sales & Marketing.

Today, the results of the years long technology investments made by ST– whether a couple of years ago or 20 years ago – allow the Company to bring innovative technologies and products to our customers, who leverage them in turn across automotive, industrial, personal electronics and communications infrastructure markets focus on creating the market disruptions they make possible. We can notably mention  hardware, software and tools for Edge AI, intelligent sensors, FD-SOI, Silicon Carbide and Silicon Photonics.

What is needed for innovation?
Innovation is a positive combination of different minds and processes. Over 9,500 employees work in R&D and design at ST, including at key locations in Agrate, Castelletto, and Catania in Italy, Crolles, Grenoble, and Rousset in France, and in Noida in India.

It involves more than 800 technical staff members who are recognized for their advanced expertise. This broad community drives our most advanced innovations, enabling us to develop new technologies, new designs and products, and the manufacturing processes to build and qualify them at scale.

ST’s culture is deeply cooperative: recognizing the importance of partnerships in the innovation process, we build strategic alliances, engage in bilateral research cooperation with universities and industrial partners, and participate in standardization bodies. Overall, we are involved in around 200 active R&D partnerships. We also participate in open ecosystems like Arduino, ARMMbed, IOTA, and Linux and foster open innovation through activities with online communities and hackathons, hosting startups on our sites, through startup accelerators, and our growing network of internal innovation labs and proof-of-concept centers.  Our open innovation activities have a number of initiatives specially designed to engage with startups through the ST for Startups program including accelerator programs, proof of concept centers and incubator programs. We also participate in leading third-party startup programs that foster innovation areas where ST is focused such as Motor Valley and Startup Autobahn within the Plug and Play ecosystem, and incubators programs, working with a global network of expert partners, such as Software République, Silicon Catalyst and e-novia.

The real challenge is being able to transform the findings, which sometimes need to be driven by new skills and competences, into an organized flow to develop innovative products and sell them in a highly competitive global semiconductor market.

Can a company teach its people to be innovative?
We view innovation as a collective task requiring the best of collective intelligence to succeed, and every organization in the company needs to contribute to it. Innovation happens if you create favorable conditions and, just as importantly, cultivate the right mindset.

Here the human factor is very important, as innovation lies within every one of us and in our ability to share ideas, knowledge, vision, mistakes, and ambitions with colleagues. Contributions need to be shared and made visible for innovation to take root, because often the best ideas and products come from our combined knowledge and ideas. This is also one of the reasons why ST technical experts participated in over 170 scientific and technical conferences and presented over 350 papers in 2024.

We have many ongoing actions to foster the right culture and improve our ability to develop internal innovation. These actions range from developing technical leaders through our Technical Fellows program which identifies new talents and leaders to fuel ST’s innovation capability, to supporting our 12 local innovation lab initiatives which we call ‘Fablabs’. They are a crucial part of our innovation ecosystem connecting ST employees and technical communities with external innovators to contribute to the growth of ST’s activities in areas not yet explored by the business units.

Internally, we promote innovation at every level of the company through our annual Tech Week, as well as the ST Annual Recognition (STAR) ceremony, a company awards system which recognizes high potential Inventions, Patents, and Technical Papers.

All these actions, and more, contribute to establishing ST as a recognized innovation leader among customer and industry groups.

Find out more about the latest innovation and technology at ST here.