Innovative ideas and processes driven by creativity are essential for companies. They shape the groundwork for developing new business areas and uncover uncharted potential. However, it is not always easy to initiate innovations in companies and integrate them as a fixed component in the corporate cultures. The innovation platform “HelloInnovators” launches these processes.
“HelloInnovators” stimulates social and creative exchange between employees using idea competitions. To this end, suitable scientific questions and concept proposals were developed as part of a previous COMET project together with the partner company Innovation Service Network (ISN). The main topics included gamification, personalization and functions utilizing social networks.
The platform was designed in a way that allowed coworkers to network and share ideas with each other. In addition, employees can participate in idea competitions on such topics as “What are the proposed solutions to problem x?” By submitting innovative ideas that are subsequently implemented, they are collecting points. Eventually, conclusions can be drawn, e.g.: In which departments is innovation particularly high and who scores the most points? Which departments work closely together and where too little exchange happens?
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Digital idea workshop uncovers uncharted potential
Reinhard Willfort, CEO of ISN, about ‘HelloInnovators’: “We aimed to create a platform that enables employees to participate in innovation management. Idea competitions and collaborative brainstorming enables coworkers to exchange ideas on ‘HelloInnovators’, work together on new ideas and participate in their preliminary evaluation. Ultimately, these ideas are evaluated and the best ones are selected for implementation by a jury of experts. In addition, employees can rate and rank these ideas. Since the platform is expandable, it allows us to integrate features, e.g., project monitoring. It can be used wherever innovative thoughts and new ideas evolve.”
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Tomorrow’s innovations will be “home-made”
“Innovative community-building functionalities were designed and prototypically implemented together with ISN,” stated Hermann Stern, Business Area Manager of Area Data-Driven Business at Know-Center. “Once digital platforms from the areas of innovation management are applied by companies, innovation’s significance increases automatically. This not only benefits the employee once his or her idea makes it from brainstorming to the finished product, but also strengthens the entire company’s innovative capacity. Which in turn has a positive impact on the company’s success.”
The platform has been successfully applied in the field of innovation management by such companies as TÜV Austria, Fraunhofer Germany, ORF’s Ö1 Open Lab and the National Bank of Austria. The innovation platform has been used for open innovation and citizen participation in the Provinces of Carinthia, Salzburg and Lower Austria.
