About the Event
The hub is a strategic summit centred on how digital and innovation leaders make sense of all the digital hype, implement the right solutions to achieve their innovation objectives and business goals.
Innovation in the digital economy is critical to the survival of any organisation but in particular for the large corporates.
The future business landscape will be formed of those who have driven innovation deep within the fabric of the organisation and created value as well as new business lines.
Are you the leader pushing the boundaries and disrupting century old business models?
Do you find yourself hitting brick walls when it comes to scale?
Do you find change is painfully slow?
Location
Digital Innovation & Transformation Hub
London
4-18 Harrington Gardens
South Kensington
United Kingdom
SW7 4LH
Discussion Notes
The Digital Innovation Hub was an innovation summit organised by the hhub to connect innovation leaders that took place on January 25/26 and brought together innovation leaders in London.
Mixer collated insights from the conference organised in three sections:
- Best Practice / Key Takeaways: Innovation techniques and procedures that were consistent across talks.
- Approaches to Innovation: Different programs created to spur innovation presented at the conference.
- Challenges & Questions: Address challenges and questions brought up by attendees.
Best Practice & Key Takeaways
Understand corporate DNA - don’t be a startup, be a corporate, but be more ‘startup-minded’
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Bring legal, finance, HR early into the conversation and involve them in the process -> setup Steering Committees if required
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The right way is what works for YOUR business
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Nobody owns innovation
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Biggest risk is not failure, its fear of NOT succeeding
Define Purpose
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E.g. Vestas –> securing competitiveness of wind energy
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E.g. Moleskine –> designs & manufactures objects for creativity
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E.g. Direct Line Group –> we are fixers
Open up to partners
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Build an ecosystem, don’t just make partnerships a brand extension
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E.g. Thomas Cook Money partners up with leading VCs in the valley such as Greylock, A16Z, Sequoia, Light Speed Ventures
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E.g. Lloyds partners with think-tanks (Innovate Finance), government agencies (Innovate UK, FCA), Incubators (FinTech Innovation Lab)
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True collaboration is key -> a bridge is a two-way street
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E.g. Moleskine & Evernote / Adobe
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Attract best entrepreneurs in the world -> focus on 5-6 that want to make it happen
Truly ‘know’ your customer
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Deepen your understanding of what your customer really cares about e.g. Moleskine defines its user as the contemporary nomad
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Disrupt everything but the customer
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Since marketing sits closest to the customer, it’s really important to link innovation and marketing e.g. Direct Line Group
Test & Launch – “Do or do not, there is no try” -Yoda
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Think iterative, not waterfall
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You can have an idea of the impact but you cannot really do business cases in the early phases
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Rather, focus on low-risk / low cost experimentation to gain support and executive buy-in before taking bets on high-risk or moonshots
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Be prepared to change business model
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The objective of a POC is to prove something and validate or invalidate business assumptions -> define success criterion (all pass, all fail, a mix of pass and fail)
Manage innovation as a portfolio (define risk and uncertainty levels)
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Types of uncertainty
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Technical
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Market
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Resource
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Organisation
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It is not how much you spend, but how you spend your money
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Try and set aside a pot of money
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Innovation happens when there is a problem to solve
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Understand which technology to bet on
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E.g. Vestas focused on hybrid solutions (wind + solar, wind + storage, wind + solar + storage)
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Learn in increments to reduce uncertainty
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Look at digital portfolio as a portfolio as well
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Go wide to go narrow
Idea crowdsourcing can be very powerful
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Ideas should come from everywhere / idea concentration is negative
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All of the top companies use crowds to help prioritise and evaluate ideas
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Number of ideas is not the most important factor; Voting has a stronger correlation to net income growth than the number of ideas
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Collaboration and participation in ideation creates a multiplier effect
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Transparency is key in the process
Hacking corporate siloes is key
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Org structure:
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Core team
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External collaborators (startups, entrepreneurs, experts, strategic partners)
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Internal collaborators (divisional and functional heads)
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Keep the team lean and agile - limit core team to must have capabilities to stay flexible and focused
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Exponential organisational - allow for horizontal and vertical scalability through short-term assignments
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Liquid workforce - create a flexible, adaptive and rotating workforce within a fluid innovation project delivery
Cultural transformation is the hardest bit
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Tech is stuck in 1998, product is from 2008, and organisation is in 1938
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Need to re-imagine the way we run our businesses
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Different strategies to spur creativity
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Bring the outside:
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e.g. Lloyds runs Digital Espressos to give people an opportunity to share ideas
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Take the inside out
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organise trips to the innovation hubs to spur curiosity
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Create experiences
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internal hackathons can help
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Create slack in the system (space to think)
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Call leaders organisational engineers
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Transparency and trust are “real” catalysts
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Need to build a continuous learning culture
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Diversity allows for serendipity
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Teach innovation thinking
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Empower and delegate
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Break down siloes and create cross-functional teams
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Communication is essential
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Build a narrative around innovation e.g. Impossible is POCible (Thales Group)
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Be visible e.g. pay for lunches
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If you don’t communicate, people will forget
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The language you use about innovation is really important
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Good Quotes
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I’m looking for a lot of people to have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done
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Do you want to ‘do things better’ or ‘do better things’?
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Innovation is 50% serendipity
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Delivering innovation is like delivering a baby
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Innovation is about belief
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Without impact, innovation is just an idea with a promise
Other Thoughts
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Innovation is a top priority for 25% of the global CEOs and one of the top for 85% of global CEO’s
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Innovation pays off - Top 10 most innovative companies outperform the Top 10 R&D spenders
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Revenue growth (5-year CAGR) – 50% vs. 40%
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EBITDA as a % of revenue (5-year average) – 69% vs. 40%
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Market Cap growth (5-year CAGR) – 65% vs. 49%
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Important Innovation skills
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Collaboration skills
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Critical thinking
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Risk taking and management
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Ability to look at innovation from different angles (customer, technology, product, industry)
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Six stages of an idea
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Explore - proof of concept
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Feasibility - prototype founders
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Build - MVP
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Validate/Pivot - market testing
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Growth - product scaling
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Maturity - optimise
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Be careful before opening up innovation platform to ALL customers
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Building blocks for a sustainable innovation capability
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Organisational readiness
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Innovation calendar
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Innovation board
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Innovation manager
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Innovation budget
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Innovation catalysts
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Idea pipeline
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Idea management
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Idea crowdsourcing
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Innovation accelerator
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Open innovation
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Innovation teams
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Innovation workshops
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Support network
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Best practice networks
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Tech scouting / watching
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Exprety consultancy
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Intellectual property management
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Innovation is everyone’s job
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Innovation training program
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Recognition mechanism
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Personal and team objectives
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Time to innovate
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Tools and methods
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Prototyping tools & methods
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Research tools & methods
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Creativity tools & methods
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Innovation handbook
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Creative working environment
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Innovation Lab
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Mobile Innovation Lab
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Collaboration zones
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Environmental triggers
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Corporate pull
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Innovation Process
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Portfolio Management
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Competitive Intelligence
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Innovation Scorecard
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Scenario Planning
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Customer Needs
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Strategy & Goals
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Technology Roadmap
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Internal Marketing & Communications
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Approaches to Innovation
Noteworthy Innovation Programs / Initiatives
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Bayer’s G4A (https://www.grants4apps.com)
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BT Infinity Lab (https://www.btplc.com/btinfinitylab/)
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Since 2013, have run 12 competitions and reviewed 800 companies
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Physical lab in partnership with TechHub community
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Moleskine Open Innovation (https://openinnovation.moleskine.com/)
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Barclays RISE program (https://thinkrise.com/)
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Started in 2014, now spread across 7 global sites
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14 enterprise scale productions till date
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Thales Digital Factory (https://www.thalesdigital.io)
1/ Vestas Approach to Innovation
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Define Innovation Vision:
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To bring new commercially relevant ideas in a profitable way, enabling Vestas to fulfil its vision: Global Leader in Sustainable Energy Solutions)
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Define Innovation Mission
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Build a portfolio of incremental, next generation and breakthrough innovations through rapid exploration and incubation of new ideas fostering external partnerships, and a strong innovation culture
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Define Key Pillars
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Apply commercially relevant technologies, leverage the world, manage as a portfolio
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Define Foundation
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Innovation culture, Innovation as a discipline
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2/ BT Open Innovation Platform
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Global scouting, Infinity Lab & Innovation Martlesham
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scan the globe for new ideas from VCs, startups, partners & competitors; Identify trends and threats
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Innovation central & new ideas
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Develop propositions to validate business case & identify new ideas
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Applied Technology Centre
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concept demonstrations, rapid prototyping & testing, strong user & customer focus
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Customer Centre & Innovation Showcases
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showcase new ideas and concepts
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Hothouse Team
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bringing everyone together for rapid acceleration
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3/ How Thales Group runs internal POCs
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Four-step process for Digital POC factory:
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Scan (1 month)
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Focus (1 month)
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Act (5 months)
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Select (1 month)
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Criterion for POC selection: 5+5
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Potential business Impact
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Compelling value proposition
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Market traction
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Value cost trade-off
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Efficiency / Revenue / Margin impact
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Game changing
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Digital cultural change
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Clarity of the business problem
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Scope of the PoC
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Defined expectation of success
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Lessons learnt
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Digital way
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Key benefits of Digital POC Factory
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Digital POC Factory initiative is a strong catalyst to develop a “test and learn” mindset
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The approach provides the opportunity to leverage internal existing digital assets and reveal digital champions internally
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Helps put the emphasis on game-changing ideas
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The pitch exercise helps to develop storytelling skills
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4/ How Visa scales Digital Innovation
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Step 1: Create experience models for all your products
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Step 2: Create design systems that users experience
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Step 3: Create inclusive co-creation environment that integrates digital thinking
Challenges & Questions
How do you get people to participate in crowdsourcing initiatives?
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Contribution is reward -> make ideas visible
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Be transparent -> explain the logic for idea selection and provide feedback
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Pick sponsors across the organisation that are well known
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Good communication strategy for internal POCs -> e.g. KISS campaign (Keep It Smart and Simple) by Liberty Global, Impossible is POCible by Thales Group
How do you demonstrate impact if you do not have management buy-in?
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Start small, with whatever budget you can accumulate from Line Manager (e.g. Barclays started with £250,000 from Line Manager to avoid getting stuck in bureaucratic mess) -> think Shawshank Redemption, chisel vs. hole in the wall on Day 1
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Partner-up and bring experts in at a low cost
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Prove value quickly (e.g. Airbus executed first internal innovation program in 3 months -> identified 5 teams that got funded)
What skill- sets do you look for in the innovation team?
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Ventures team
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Investor spirit
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Entrepreneurial DNA
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Tech geeks that are human-centred
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Accelerator team
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Can challenge startups
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Understand corporate needs and are good at stakeholder management
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How do you get employees to participate?
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First stage - spare time w/ small budget and full autonomy for 3 months
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Second stage (once proven concept) - dedicate small percentage of work time (10-15%) with medium-scale budget for 6 months
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Third stage (concept can scale) - dedicate significant percentage of work (50-100%) with significant resources and team at disposal
Do cash reward incentives increase participation?
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Upfront reward doesn’t work -> need to figure out the right recognition for the the right audience
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Quality of ideas more important than quantity of ideas
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Host Presentations
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Example File51kB
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