InnovationCast and nlmtd convert the collective talent of your organization and external stakeholders into value

How do you unlock the creative and innovative power present in your organisation? In the digital age is ‘Tool-enabled Innovation Management’ finally possible. Every employee is challenged to participate on co-creating stronger ideas faster and bring them to life. And even better: beyond engaging employees to innovate, the tool can also support and boost Open Innovation by involving relevant external parties like universities, start-ups and value chain partners.

And that is desperately needed for innovation to actually take place, because nowadays innovation is only successful if you involve others. Such open innovation was unknown at the time of the idea box. Development of new products and services took place behind closed doors, without any form of external intervention.

A lot has changed since then. Marc Spronk (nlmtd) “Companies know that opportunities to innovate can come from diverse people and they want to prepare their organizations to innovate in a systematic way. They have the desire to innovate in order to stay relevant and start innovation projects to solve diverse challenges”.

It is remarkable that 94% of managers are currently dissatisfied with the results of innovation projects for their company. The figure comes from a McKinsey study. The same research states that creativity must be at the centre of innovation activities, and that innovation is the growth engine of all organizations.

Those are true and beautiful words, but the reality is that creativity and innovation are slippery and fluid. Getting a grip on it and leading it in the right direction – so that it works for your organization instead of against it – is a time-consuming and costly endeavour. And that leads to the perceived dissatisfaction with innovation efforts in nine out of ten times.

Which approach works?

nlmtd supports organisations to become future proof and innovate successfully. We have experienced that a combination of a ‘corporate’ approach with a 'start-up, just do and act' mentality instead of extensive stakeholder management works most effective. With a focus on people and the team that has to do it instead of focus on the idea. Also focus on validation and customer development instead of focus on getting internal budgets and products development will work better to be successful.

Every manager knows that employees are the most important asset of the organization. If they all work according to the purpose of the organization, and each of them has the opportunity to bring his or her own ideas or initiatives into the organization, both management and employees are buzzing and bubbling and the power of the organisation to innovate is best used. But how do you use that ability and how do you convert employees’ thinking power of employees into practical, tangible and usable solutions to make the organization future-proof?

To improve and accelerate innovation, it is crucial to give ideas a stage in the organization. Innovation exists by the grace of ideas. But an idea is just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest effort is to capture ideas and then turn them into valuable innovation. And if possible faster: in weeks instead of years.

InnovationCast: transparent idea management

InnovationCast accelerates idea generation and manages all phases of the innovation process, with transparency. It is easy to use and combines insights, ideas and competencies from employees, clients and other external stakeholders. It drives innovation and growth at every level.

InnovationCast makes the collective intelligence of your company work for you and quickly generate innovative ideas that the organization itself considers viable. The starting point is ’improving other's ideas’.

Teresa van Oerle (InnovationCast): “All employees participate in innovation on an open platform. Everyone can suggest an idea that solves a certain company challenge, comment on it and work on it with colleagues to make a valuable step forward for the company”.

InnovationCast connects, challenges and rewards employees and is therefore a transparent successor to the old ideas box. It makes innovation visible in a social, interactive and challenging way.

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Good practice: experiences with InnovationCast from Delta Cafés and Vodafone

One of the companies that has successfully been working with InnovationCast is the Portuguese Delta Cafés, a leading coffee roasting company in Europe, with several companies in the F&B industry, founded in 1961. Delta Cafés improved its innovation processes and evolve it by engaging every employee in the innovation process. They launch strategic challenges on their InnovationCast platform, inviting employees to contribute anytime and anywhere, with ideas, solutions or new business concepts.

The contributions of employees gradually lead to valuable ideas for the organization. This has already led to introduction of new products to the market, for example a cereal bar that contains the same amount of caffeine as an espresso.

Recently, Innovation Leader, a media and events company based in the US with the world’s largest network of corporate innovators, has awarded the Delta Cafés innovation model with the 2019 Innovation Leader Impact Award’.

You innovate in co-creation. Innovative companies also tend to attract talent and knowledge from outside the organization. That is what Vodafone did with InnovationCast. Challenges were launched on the platform to recruit start-ups with knowledge about AI, cyber security and the Internet of Things. This has resulted in interesting collaborations.

Dozens of other medium-sized companies and corporates such as Sanofi , DHL and Mota-Engil are generating value using InnovationCast. It is an easy to build and monitor innovation management system that shows in which areas and when the company can act. This way, your organization can also translate the right ideas into solutions – and thus stay ahead of the competition.

Three reasons to start using InnovationCast now

• You will be the first to see signals and shifts in the market that are crucial for the future of your company.
• You can innovate at scale an get more talent, even from outside of your company.
• You get more organizational alignment and can move ideas to executed projects faster, with flexibility and scale.

Faster innovation and being prepared for the future? Curious about what InnovationCast and nlmtd can mean your organization?

InnovationCast is a scalable SaaS platform that is paid per user. Different licenses exist depending on the need and company size. It allows organizations to benefit from the advantages of InnovationCast, for less than the price of 1 cup of coffee per month, per person.

nlmtd creates future proof organisations and supports them with the development of their innovation strategy, innovation management system and making it happen through execution, powered by the software solution of InnovationCast.

For more information, contact:
Teresa van Oerle | teresa.vanoerle@innovationcast.com,
Zhen Jun Chang | zhenjun@nlmtd.com or
Marc Spronk | marc@nlmtd.com.