At Birds of a Feather 2014, we discussed key learnings and insights with innovation program leaders such as Emily Hopkins, Consumer Analyst at Unum. As a large company of 10,000 people, Emily shared that breaking down silos and identifying innovation Challenge champions has been the biggest hurdle for their program. She joined us at this year’s Birds of a Feather to learn how other organizations have overcome similar hurdles, and shared her key takeaways with us from this year’s event.
Watch the video here:
One of the biggest learnings from Birds of a Feather for Emily was how people have used rewards to recognize and motivate people to participate in innovation Challenges. Emily said, “We have wrestled with it back and forth just with our own internal culture — about how you reward people for ideas whether it would be recognition or actual rewards. It’s surprising how many companies use rewards for that encouragement and engagement level so, I think that that’s something that I will take back and something that we’ll definitely look at.”
Emily discovered at Birds of a Feather that, while there is no silver bullet to solve all innovation program hurdles, there is an avid and dedicated community of innovation program leaders who are willing to discuss and share successes as well as failures in order to learn and grow from each other. This has been the most powerful takeaway for Emily.
Stay tuned to the Brightidea blog for more insights from our Birds of a Feather 2014 event for Innovation Program Leaders.
