Happy holidays, innovation enthusiasts, and welcome to Planview IdeaPlace’s 12 Days of Innovation! This 2014 spotlight series features hand-picked resources, upcoming events, webcasts, thought leadership pieces, and more to give you an inspirational boost for the coming year. Enjoy!
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On the fourth day of innovation, we’d like to share with you: four of our favorite customer stories — because it just so happens that our customers are some of the most innovative, inspiring game-changers in their industries. And if you need to catch up on the previous posts in this series, check out day one, day two, and day three.
1. UnitedHealth Group: Practicing Innovation in Health Care
The team at UHG has an outstanding reputation for constantly seeking ways to improve the health care experience for everyone involved, and for finding the most innovative solutions to long-standing issues. In their piece from our Innovators@Work series, Director of Innovation R&D Greg Hicks discusses the strategies and success of UHG’s internal innovation program:
“UnitedHealth Group launched an open innovation program to give employees, or the “crowd,” and their ideas easier and more transparent access to the company’s leaders. UnitedHealth Group utilized Mindjet Planview IdeaPlace (branded as “ignite! Innovation” to UnitedHealth Group employees), as the technology interface. This enabled employees to submit ideas in response to challenges presented by UnitedHealth Group leaders.”
2. MetLife: 2014’s Most Innovative Company
In an exciting recent development, we learned that Mindjet customer MetLife was named 2014’s Most Innovative Large Company by the Best in Biz Awards! From the announcement:
“To help drive the social innovation aspect of the Innovation Office, MetLife uses Mindjet’s Planview IdeaPlace, a platform designed to give businesses an automated structure that makes innovation a scalable process that they can leverage to achieve competitive advantage. Using Planview IdeaPlace, MetLife has organized collaboration across the company’s national boundaries, become more transparent, and prioritize business goals with local, regional, and business unit-level challenges.
Recently, MetLife ran a large innovation challenge asking the Global Operations organization for suggestions on how to eradicate unnecessary procedures and processes. The challenge engaged 8,100 employees across 11 countries, including the US, India, Russia, Japan, Spain, Portugal, Bahrain, Kuwait, Omar, Qatar, and the UAE. By utilizing the Planview IdeaPlace platform, MetLife was able to easily collaborate and engage with employees all over the world, generating 3,700 unique ideas and 15,000+ collaborative contributions over a three-week period.”
3. DPR Construction: Finding a 20% Efficiency Gain from a Single Idea
It’s not altogether common to see innovation programs thriving in the construction business, but then, DPR is not your average company. With core beliefs centered on moving forward, constant learning, sustainability, and advancing processes, the team at DPR has taken innovation to many new heights. From the case study:
“Even in a decentralized company like DPR that focuses on roles and responsibilities over job titles, there was a recognized need for breaking down silos and collaborating globally, as well as accelerating the rate of idea adoption. A group of approximately 20 individuals from various regions assembled to answer the question, “What does innovation mean to DPR?” Within two years, an innovation team was created with its own full-time innovation program manager, Jim Washburn, who stepped out of his role as regional manager in Southern California to champion innovation nationally. The company now has six full-time corporate innovation champions who manage the process, along with part-time regional assistance.
“We wanted to figure out how to encourage people to elevate ideas. Planview IdeaPlace helps us with that, speeding up ideas and getting more of the community to see what is going on, vote thumbs up or down, and help decide which ideas to react to first,” says Washburn. In comparison to traditional communication mediums, team member Joel Bass explains, “Email is only visible to the people that it’s attached to. Planview IdeaPlace is the opposite of this. In order for collaboration to work, you have to make it possible for people to engage broadly and on their schedule.”
4. Cambia Health Solutions: Transforming the Health Care Landscape Through Innovation
Cambia Health is a non-profit organization that’s been transforming the health care landscape for almost a century, and they have no intention of slowing down their tidal wave of innovative solutions and services. With the industry facing turmoil, Cambia turned to structured innovation processes in order to develop scalable solutions to the many challenges being faced by professionals and patients alike. From the case study:
“Cambia holds innovation as one of its core values today, making it part of the company’s DNA. “Being the Chief Value Officer for Innovation allows for a different kind of conversation. When someone says I don’t have time to innovate, I ask them, does that mean you only have time for teamwork on Tuesday or ethics on Friday? When you think about innovation as a value it really transforms the way you prioritize your thinking,” said Mohan Nair, Chief Innovation Officer for Cambia Health Solutions.
“When I first took on the Chief Innovation Officer role, people would often throw their ideas at me in the elevator, thinking they had done their duty,” said Nair. “We had to become a lightning rod of innovation, attracting and engaging employees to join us in ideation and design.” Innovation Force (IF), the internal team Nair leads, was born.”
