Some global organizations have large scale innovation initiatives; their aim is to involve employees in grass-roots innovation activities, driving them to identify questions that require innovation, identify possible solutions and try them, iterating as needed.
We’ve written in the past about gamification for innovation, but I wanted to show how these high-level concepts can be broken down into a real use case at a large enterprise.
The core idea behind corporate innovation initiatives is that innovation can be driven from below and not by management edict. These programs begin by establishing an innovation “body” – a loosely coupled group of innovators spread throughout the organization – and embedding it in the organization. The core challenge is to build a culture of sustainable innovation, with people at its core. How do you launch and foster an entrepreneurial mindset in large organizations?
Here are some ideas:
Training
One of the core requirements of innovation programs is training. Yes, this may sound odd – don’t great ideas just drop out of the blue? But in reality, the goal of these programs is to drive innovation by providing learning materials – to get people exposed to ideas, challenges and to socialize them by organizing events. eLearning gamification can be great this, and combined with many gamification elements that track performance. You can read more here.
Social proof
Everything that is innovation-centric or that is about contributing to a community as a whole is driven by social proof and karma. That’s how we humans are built.
That’s why any innovation project has to have a healthy dose of social proof and karma points. You want to show off your good deeds, your innovation peers in another country/division also want to show them off.
This is where good old badges (as well as kudos, one of our favorite game mechanics, and a social feed) come into play:
Instead of tracking performance, tracking karma
Yes, karma points are lovely.
Karma can also be used as game “levels”. Here’s a way to think about it:
Competition too
Although we typically discourage outright competition, some competition between innovation champions in a large corporation can be nice sometimes. Use it like this:
Don’t forget knowledge contribution
We believe that knowledge creation is great for gamification. Here’s a case study
In the innovation story, here’s how to use it:
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Prior to Centrical, Dalit worked at LivePerson and NICE creating digital transformation and customer engagement solutions. Her areas of expertise include complete product lifecycle management, translating market and customer requirements to draw a viable product roadmap, identifying champions, and then harnessing their enthusiasm to drive adoption of innovations.
Dalit Holds a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science from the Technion Technological institute in Haifa.
Previously the Global Head of Marketing for SAP SuccessFactors, April was responsible for end-to-end marketing for SuccessFactors around the world. In this role, April led strategic marketing plans to grow global brand recognition, revenue, customer success and category creation of human experience management (HXM), which is focused on solution innovations that put the employee at the center of work. April also served as a Diversity and Inclusion Lead at SAP and led global thought leadership and strategic partnerships inspiring an inclusive culture, women’s equality, supplier diversity, and sustainable supply chains.
April has been honored by various organizations including CRN’s “Women of the Channel” and as a “Top 100 Ethnic Minority Executive” by EmPower. She holds a B.A. in Communications and Marketing from Simon Fraser University, Canada’s leading comprehensive university.
Ella holds a B.A in Psychology from the Hebrew University and MSc in Organizational Behavior from Recanati Business School at Tel Aviv University.
Previously, she held the role of Head of Product Experience and Communications for LivePerson, a leading Conversational AI platform, where she played crucial part in delivering significant product innovation and customer growth. Prior to her time at LivePerson, she held multiple senior product roles at NICE, a leading enterprise customer experience (CX) software provider, including Director of Product Portfolio and Director of Product Management.
Linat holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Computer Science from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). She graduated magna cum laude from both institutions.
Prior to that he was CEO of Gilon-Synergy Business Insight, a national leader in Business Intelligence. In 2010, Gilon-Synergy was acquired by Ness Technologies (NASDAQ:NSTC) and Gal went on to serve as Senior VP at Ness, and was member of its executive management.
Prior to that he was VP customer relations and operations at Deloitte Consulting. He also worked at EDS and Bashan. He holds a MBA degree in Marketing and Information Technologies from the Tel Aviv University.
Jayme Smithers brings 25 years of leadership experience in enterprise software. He has been building and scaling high performance revenue teams in the worlds leading technology companies including Oracle, NetSuite, SAP, BusinessObjects, Crystal Decisions and most recently ThoughtExchange.
As the CRO at ThoughtExchange (a leader in Enterprise Discussion Management) he helped significantly scale their growth, led them into new markets, brought in key investment and helped them become the leader in community engagement across the Education sector.
At NetSuite, Jayme helped innovate, grow and scale key verticals as NetSuite become the standard Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) thanks to the introduction of new channels and a value centric approach to the sales process.
Prior to NetSuite, Jayme worked at SAP where he led various roles including global revenue channels, large enterprise and mid market teams. It was here at SAP where he built a strong partnership with our CMO April Crichlow where they focused on building world class teams with clear expectations, coaching and career development!
Outside of work, Jayme can typically be found with his family in the mountains sharing his love, passion and knowledge of nature and sport.
Jayme is actively coaching the Nancy Greene Ski league and competitive youth soccer.
Jayme holds a business degree from University of Denver where he competed in two varsity sports (soccer and alpine skiing) and he helped led the Alpine Ski team to back to back NCAA National Titles in 00 and 01.
Daphne has over 15 years of experience in Customer Relations and Retention in both B2B and B2C environments. Her area of expertise is leading customer success, consulting and global professional services teams within public and private sector companies. She is focused on leading teams to grow the partnership with our clients.
Prior to Centrical, Daphne worked software and service companies in the online marketing and gaming industry.
Daphne holds MA in Statistics – Specialization in Operations Research and a MBA degree, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Ariel has over 16 years’ experience in a wide variety of R&D leadership roles. He is highly experienced at building R&D teams from the ground up, driving high levels of accountability and ownership and setting up automation infrastructures. For the past 10 years Ariel has managed both in-house and offshore development teams at companies ranging from startups to enterprise organizations.
Prior to joining Centrical, Ariel served as VP of R&D at Worthy.com where his team dramatically improved product stability, quality and execution. Before that, he was VP R&D at Applicaster where he led infrastructure changes from project to product. Ariel has also held various R&D positions at Retalix (later acquired by NCR).
Ariel holds B.sc in Computer science & Math, and MBA degree in Information Technologies, both from Bar Ilan University
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