Dancing lessons from an elephant?
A jumbo sized corporation gives a crash course on how to rediscover your innovation mojo [Video]
This fascinating talk is all about how BT’s legendary research operation (the UK’s largest?) ceased to be the telecoms titan’s exclusive haven of creativity and how this vast organisation began to treat just about everyone as a partner worthy of a whirl around the innovation dance floor.
Paul Garner is Customer Innovation Engagement Programme Director with BT
He is a Chartered Physicist and has published one patent and authored 35 papers and book chapters in the field of telecommunications applications.
Paul joined BT Research in 1984 to work on the development and production of optical components for TAT-8, the first optical Trans-Atlantic telecommunication system.
He was a member of the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Foresight Task Force on Healthcare and has been responsible for working directly with BT corporate clients on innovation projects since 2007.
Paul Garner says: “Adversity has driven invention and innovation to create new opportunities and new ways of moving forward . . . what’s changing is the model of innovation.” He adds that, “Great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone.” He also cites YouTube as an example. He says 20 years ago, people took videos and had to mail their videos to be picked among so many others who have sent in their videos – all hoping to be a part of a show. With YouTube, everybody can just upload their videos.
Garner says, the concept has always been there but now we have enabling technologies like YouTube that has mad this concept so viral, that’s why it has become so popular.
How does BT encourage its own employees to be part of innovation?
I found this article: http://www.the-chiefexecutive.com/features/feature710/ where it says: The defined structure for harnessing creative thinking and achieving sustainable innovation at BT is known as open innovation.
This project has many strands, including the offer of bonuses and rewards for BT employees who can contribute new ideas that positively impact the organisation’s delivery of products and services.
Internal resource management, which brings the HR department into the innovation equation, is key.
“You must incentivise people in the organisation to drive enhancement of your customers’ experience and get every man and woman in your organisation to understand their contribution to innovation.
Our new ideas scheme works on the basis of awarding points for the impact of an idea and it involves our global staff, who are at the coalface in terms of delivering on our broader corporate strategy,” remarks Matt Bross, chief technology officer of BT.
He also believes that BT as an organisation must increasingly look beyond its own internal assets and connect to a much larger universe of creative thinkers, including developers outside the company, in order to maximise innovative capability. Thus, one of the key strands to the open innovation programme is to harness the skills and imaginations of external developers throughout the world by providing access to software and hardware elements already nurtured within BT.
“Globalisation is driving innovation,” says Bross. “There are great ideas coming out of China, India, Latin America, Asia and Israel, for example. We are trying to explore opportunities wherever they exist and fuse them together to bring together the best thinking in the world. Working with developers in those markets also helps us to develop solutions for the market and to price them appropriately.”
This is indeed a great way to encourage employees to be part of innovation in the company. But, will other companies be capable of giving such incentives to their employees?