What led you into working with innovation?

I got into working with innovation early on in my career, starting already in my studies. I studied innovation economics and got my first job as executive assistant to the CEO. In that job, I was part of founding our Innovation Board that serves as the decision maker for innovation projects. Personally, I am the kind of person that is always on the move and have a disruptive mindset always asking questions and wanting to change this. This is sometimes quite annoying to people, but I do it with my best intentions. To me, it is a red flag if people respond to my question of “why” with a “because this is how we are used to doing it” and I will keep asking until I get to the root of things.

‍

‍

It takes years to fully integrate an agile way of working.

‍

‍

What does a typical day look like??

At the moment, we are transitioning to agile software development (applied in our core software development) so this is what is on my agenda at this point of time.  We are defining processes and new roles, and there are many learnings and discussions along the way. We have built 10 agile teams by now, but it is a process that has taken some time. It takes years to fully integrate an agile way of working.

We are also currently in the evaluation phase of an idea campaign: the first round of idea sharing is done, and we are giving feedback to all idea authors. I try to give individual feedback to all idea authors. It is very time-consuming, but I find it is worth it to show our appreciation of their effort.

‍

‍

‍

Which challenges in relation to innovation do you face at your company?

As mentioned, we are quite successful in getting colleagues engaged in our idea campaigns, but the real challenge for us is the transition from maturation to implementation. Getting resources to actually implement an idea can be really hard as it comes on top of everything else and often at inconvenient times. To make that transition easier, we have started to reserve a retainer of resources (FTEs) into the budget plan. It also helps to start stakeholder/sponsor management very early on the process. The CEO is our financial sponsor, and we have now agreed to report to our CIO on the progress of all ideas in the implementation phase to make sure they get the attention needed.

‍

‍

Can you share a recent success story?

One of the ideas we picked during an idea campaign was a very big success that resulted in two new customer projects. The idea was not groundbreaking innovation, but its starting point was an unmet customer need that we could solve quite easily, hereby making things both faster and easier for the customer. There was a need out there, the timing was right and the ide approved to be very valuable to us as well, saving us a lot of money.

Other than this specific success story, I am quite proud of our participation rate. It is important to me that people see the point of participating in the campaigns and that I can feel the motivation to change and shape things.

‍

‍

‍

‍

What is one thing about innovation that you think is important?

People tend to think that innovation is very mystical that happens in a black box or in the mind of a genius. That is not true – everyone can be part of innovation. Although a bit old, I really like Schumpeter’s definition of innovation: a novel combination of re-combination of resources with the goal of creating new value. This means that innovation is not a random process of magic; it is a directed and conscious effort that takes its starting point in a need. Network is an important factor in succeeding with innovation: an internal network to get access and resources and an external to get inspiration and new insights. Engagement of people is also an important success factor: without people, you cannot do anything! And a big part of getting people engaged is to make it fun and easy for them. If you can do that, you are off to a good start.

‍

‍