Innovation Drive

The Situation

A Strategic Business Unit of a global consumer foods business wanted to drive innovation. It was looking to get new ideas to break away from a history of being mainly focussed on a few existing, very successful, products. In doing this it wanted to encourage creativity and get every employee to be part of the new idea creation process. The whole unit needed to be aligned behind the process and the results. Additionally the business wanted an in house team to lead the work, with them becoming self sufficient after the initial support, training and coaching from Meeting Magic.

In doing the work, there were also some challenges

  • People were only going to be available for a limited time to attend meetings
  • Sponsors needed to be managed and their full support confirmed
  • The maximum length of any meeting was two and a half hours
  • The process needed to be easily understood and transferable between different people who would be involved in different sessions

The Results

11 groups of meetings were run that involved a total of 98 people. Through the process that they worked through the following was achieved over four months:

  • 800 “beginnings of ideas” were generated
  • 90 ideas were developed in the sessions and put into an “ideas bank”
  • 31 final, developed ideas were proposed to Sponsors
  • 3 are now full running projects in the New Product process

Additional benefits also came about:

  • 11 more groups were run by the in house team who had been coached by us
  • All employees were involved
  • Approaches to other meetings changed; making them more productive & engaging
  • This Unit is now leading and helping other parts of the business in innovation work
  • A number of employees chose to grow their own facilitation skills

How We Did It

  • We worked in partnership with the client to decide which approach to innovation best suited their culture, their aims and their recognised challenges
  • The client’s team chose which areas were to be focussed on by each group and commissioned the research that would be used to explain the challenge.
  • We designed the four weeks of four, 2.5 hour meetings.
  • We designed the visual agendas and charts that would be used in the meetings to encourage participation.
  • We developed A3 templates for use by participants. They were made to be quickly understood and followed, without feeling restrictive.
  • We ran a condensed first session for the Board so they experienced what was to come and so they were clearer when fulfilling their role as Sponsors.
  • Meeting Magic worked as Lead Facilitator then Co- facilitator and finally Coach as the internal team grew in experience and confidence.
  • We ran 8 hour meeting versions with external agencies and sister businesses.
  • We reviewed, adjusted and improved the design, as the programme was rolled out, while staying loyal to the core design and the desired consistency of outputs

Download

Download Innovation Drive case study