IdeaScale Nation

ePolicyWorks is a collaborative approach to federal policymaking that coordinates the flow of ideas and information between federal policymakers and key stakeholders in the public. It has become a model for national policy-building efforts and, most recently, as part of the Department of Labor's efforts to support American workers and position the economy for a strong rebound in an unprecedented pandemic, the department hosted a couple of national online dialogues to solicit ideas about challenges that may be faced as businesses reopen and how best to help employers and workers reopen America's workplaces safely. Those ideas played a crucial role in informing USDOL's rapid public policy response and helped secure safer workplaces in these exceptional times. Since then they've begun to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and have begun to leverage their best practices that they've perfected over the past seven years to solve bigger and more complex issues. They have run over 60 ePolicyWorks challenges over the years and now Katia Albanese and Hope Adler, both leaders at Concept Communications which supports several of the US Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy initiatives, including ePolicyWorks are here to share what they have learned. 

Sagicor is a full-service financial institution offering a wide range of products and services, everything from life and health insurance to annuities, pensions, real estate, banking, and investment needs. But the financial sector is constantly being shaped by technology and consumer trends and in 2021, Sagicor hosted its inaugural Data Innovation Challenge. In this competition, Sagicor team members were encouraged to pitch their innovative ideas on how the Group can use data to enhance efficiency and better serve its clients. Three teams walked away with cash and we're going to learn more about how Sagicor thinks about data innovation and their employee competition in this podcast. This month, we're pleased to introduce you to Audra-Jade Baker, Corporate Data Governance Lead at Sagicor. 

The City of Calgary is a cosmopolitan Alberta city with numerous skyscrapers set on the side of prairie grasslands. They're the third largest municipality in Canada, serving 1.3 million people and historically Calgary's growth has been attributed to its status as the center of Canada's oil industry, but as times have changed, Calgary has been working to reinvent itself. As part of that reinvention, the City reaches out to employees and citizens for feedback. They've run challenges on voting, smart cities, and (most recently) on sustainability goals. This month, we're pleased to introduce you to Lisa Sierra, Innovation and Analytics Manager for the City of Calgary who is going to tell us more about their program. 

Princess Auto is a Canadian company, it's privately owned and they sell tools and equipment to farmers, mechanics, inventors and tons of other tradespeople. They have 48 stores all across Canada and that means that their store employees, their call center employees, everyone and corporate are spread over 4,000 miles of Canadian territory. They don't call their customers, users or clients, they refer to them as “guests” and they are working to discover their unserved needs every day and that's why we're talking to their innovation team - to find out how they stay ahead and how they put their customer experience at the center of their work. This month, we're pleased to introduce you to Dave Matthes, Imagination Leader at Princess Auto. 

Central Washington University enrolls over ten thousand students and offers them a rich extracurricular and academic environment with unique organizations like the Rodeo Club to the Trombone Studio. Notable alumni of Central Washington University include Dallas Cowboys quarterback Jon Kitna and Doug Wood, the COO of Tommy Bahama. As the Director of Capital Planning & Projects, Delano is responsible for the development and implementation of the Campus Master Plan for new construction and renovations and ensuring alignment of the strategic direction of the university through the Capital request process to the State of Washington and to make sure that he's involving a diverse and broad group in that process, he uses crowdsourcing to make important strategic choices. We're going to learn more about that today. 

Grant Thornton is one of the world's largest accounting and consulting networks which provides assurance, tax and advisory services to businesses and the public sector. They have member firms around the world and they deliver their services through a network of 58,000 people in over 130 countries. In 2020, Grant Thornton created the global 'Innovation Exchange' to leverage the collective intelligence of that 58,000 person workforce. The goal was to collect ideas for innovative products and share awareness of processes that could be rolled out globally. And that's one of the things that we'll talk about with Ben Verdi, Global Innovation Manager at Grant Thornton International in this episode of IdeaScale Nation. 

Quality Technology Services is a publicly traded company and a leading provider of data center solutions across a diverse footprint spanning more than 7 million square feet of QTS Mega Data Centers throughout North America and Europe. When it comes to differentiators in this market, QTS often cites their relationship with their customers - putting them first, even involving them in the solutions-building process. For Yoshi Furuta, the Senior Product Development Manager at QTS Data Centers, these two values are inextricably linked. And we're going to hear more about both of these things today in our conversation, but first let me say

This month, we're pleased to introduce you to Atul Dubey, Chief Strategy Officer at Wolters Kluwer. Wolters Kluwer is a Dutch-company that is a global provider of professional information, software solutions and services for clinicians, accountants, lawyers, in the tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. They serve customers in over 180 countries, maintain operations in over 40 countries, and employ approximately 19,200 people worldwide. And with a global network , wide ranging in specialties, they have a huge opportunity to leverage the collective domain knowledge of their workforce, which is why Wolters Kluwer has been running their Global Innovation Awards for the past ten years – a cross-company competition encouraging the development and implementation of innovative solutions from within. It's not just a great employee engagement exercise - 75% of the suggested ideas are implemented and adopted across Wolters Kluwer. And the work shows, Wolters Kluwer regularly wins awards for its innovation performance. Under Atul's broad umbrella of responsibilities, he manages the Global Innovation Awards and that's one of the things that we're going to chat about today.

The U.S. Coast Guard is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces. In order to meet its ambitious goals, the Coast Guard relies on a highly distributed workforce who are required to work under some of the most challenging of conditions: in disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes, during winter storms and the harsh weather of the Arctic, with situations involving mass evacuations or major casualties and loss of life. And for that reason, the Coast Guard has had a long history of innovation. Rear Admiral Schofield works to keep the Coast Guard up-to-date and competitive against emerging challenges by directing efforts across all Coast Guard acquisition programs, acquisition support, personnel, finance, contracting, research and development and innovation activities to execute the service's acquisition portfolio. Today we're going to find out more about how the U.S. Coast Guard continuously innovates to meet their mission.

Ivanti is an IT software company that recently acquired Cherwell. Cherwell empowers organizations to improve service experiences and automate workflows using data that spans different contexts and business units. The result is very often much-needed digital transformation. Now we are going to find out how Cherwell customers are at the center of Cherwell's solutions from Lori Marshall, Vice President Of Product Management and Christine Moore, a Product Analyst from Cherwell Software acquired by Ivanti.

This month we meet Dr. Curt Carver, Chief Information Officer at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who has a stated vision that innovation does not depend on one person but instead on a dedicated team where everyone is an agent of innovation and aligned to support the University of Alabama at Birmingham. So we're going to hear more about how Dr. Carver brings this vision to life in our conversation today. 

To kick off season three of IdeaScale Nation, we’re pleased to bring you a panel discussion with TWO great organizations who are innovating in the same inspiring place: South Africa. I’m pleased to introduce Helga Links and Bridgette Morris from the City of Cape Town, South Africa and Samantha Fisher and Este Digue from Motus.Now,  the City of Cape Town has a long history of innovation with famous inventions like the CAT scan and the first heart transplant pioneered there, but now the city is introducing innovation hubs like the Silicon Cape and has established an innovation team and an innovation forum that are driving innovation efforts across the city.Motus is South Africa’s leading automotive group, employing over 16 000 people globally. They are a diversified (non-manufacturing) business in the automotive sector with unrivalled scale and scope in South Africa, a selected international presence primarily in the United Kingdom and Australia, as well as a limited presence in South East Asia and Southern and East Africa. Innovation is one of the three Motus keystones and Motus Xponential – mx - is the innovation brand/initiative within Motus.  Let's see how these two teams are helping innovation to flourish in South Africa. 

Winpak is a global packaging corporation with twelve manufacturing facilities in North America and if you think you’ve never heard of them, I’d just ask you to consider if you unwrapped some cheese from your refrigerator, pulled back the lid of a yogurt cup, popped an allergy pill out of its box.. If you have, it’s quite likely that you’ve encountered a Winpak product recently. They manufacture and distribute high-quality packaging materials that is primarily used for the protection of perishable foods, beverages, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and more. This month we interview their director of Innovation, Manuel Moreno who engages their 2,500 frontline employees in the innovation process. 

StratNovation is a strategy and innovation consulting firm that has advised numerous clients across the African continent, including 3M, Siemens, City of Cape Town, the Department of Water and Sanitation, the South African Post Office, and many, many others. They do this by focusing on a variety of aspects of innovation strategy: from identifying new insights for strategic planning, to project management, to skilling up entire workforces with training. We're going to talk to him about some of these. This month, we're pleased to introduce you to Robert Mulder, Managing Partner at StratNovation consulting and Nik Eberl is an Innovation Associate who specializes in Innovation Training at StratNovation.

The City of Westminster is the seventh most populous city in Colorado and Downtown Westminster is almost equidistant between downtown Denver and Boulder. In the 2000s, Westminster was ranked as one of the Top 50 Cities to live. But Westminster is also a city that prioritizes innovation, it has invested in Smart City initiatives like autonomous food delivery and is formulating sustainability initiatives, but one of the unique things about their approach is that they are bringing citizens into the decision making process so that their work is sometimes directed by the public that they serve. This month, we’re pleased to introduce you to Ryan Hegreness, Innovation and Communications Manager for the City of Westminster, Colorado.

Graybar is a Fortune 500 corporation and one of the largest employee-owned companies in North America. They are a leader in the distribution of high quality communications and data networking products and the company is over 150 years old. Many companies that have been around for that long struggle to keep up, but Graybar has always reinvented itself and that’s where their dedicated innovation lab comes. In this podcast interview, Todd Hart, Director of Graybar's Innovation Lab talks about incremental vs. breakthrough innovation, the role of their innovation council, and the collaborative environment that breeds change.

NSW Health Pathology is a state-wide clinical and scientific service that provides reliable public pathology, forensic and analytical science services across New South Wales in Australia. Their forensic science teams support patients and the NSW justice system by providing timely, state-of-the-art analysis. More than half the population of NSW has used their services in the last 12 months with around 70% of medical decisions relying on pathology. In this episode, we interview Natasha Claxton who is Innovation Project Officer at New South Wales Health Pathology and Amanda Koegelenberg who is the Research and Innovation Program Director there. They will talk about their program that spans everything from values identification to new technology and talk about the processes that organize it all.

InnSure is a not-for-profit located at Cambridge Innovation Center with the missions of supporting new venture development and developing leadership in the insurance industry. Charlie Sidoti is the executive director in charge of creating breakthrough innovations and peeling back on the complexity of how insurance is usually presented. InnSure blossomed with the intention of it being an in person gathering experience but has now moved to a virtual environment. Since they are just starting off, opportunities presented to connect with innovation centers globally. The public and insurance sector tend to not overlap, InnSure challenges to bridge that gap and promote those individual enterprises through their most recent challenge. Please note: InnSure was previously referred to as Innovation Underwriters. This is what the speakers refer to in the discussion.

New York University (NYU) is one of the largest private universities in the US and also operates in 25 countries. Michael MccCaw is Chair Person of the Administrative Management Council at NYU and is passionate about creating a constant stream of ideas in the council. Michael has had the opportunity to work cross functionally with teams across the NYU board which has allowed him to gain powerful insight and exposure. Employees have taken advantage of IdeaScale and maximized its use during the COVID-19 era and has allowed an inflow of ideas that had not been as frequent as previous years.

Yamaha is the world's largest manufacturer of a full line of musical instruments from pianos and strings to drum machines and synthesizers. They have a long history of innovation but are now driving some of their product development strategies by engaging their customers in ideation. Ben Israel, the R&D Planning Manager at Yamaha, will be sharing his experience of leading the synth product team to crowdsource innovation in an R&D department at Yamaha.

Sunshine Coast Credit Union (SCCU) is a state-charted credit union located in British Columbia in Canada. Alex Kostenko, the Director of Strategy & Innovation at SCCU, believes that building an innovative organizational culture bridges floating ideas to implementations in reality. From SCCU's Organizational Health Index (OHI), Alex learned that advocating for the ideology of innovations in a firm isn’t enough to drive changes. Employees need a structured system with appropriate tools to be innovative, and IdeaScale provides a platform solution to connect culture to innovation and has helped SCCU increase the implementation rate by 40%.

The Royal Australian Navy consists of nearly 50 commissioned vessels and over 16,000 personnel. They are one of the largest and most sophisticated naval forces in the Pacific region, with a significant presence in the Indian Ocean and worldwide operations in support of military campaigns and peacekeeping missions. Lieutenant Commander Delo is the innovation engagements manager for the Royal Australian Navy where he has implemented networks and processes to assist intrapreneurial activity across Navy and other major groups in Defence. He has played key roles in the development of a variety of innovation programs such as new people management regimes, developing a leadership academy, and a culture development program. Delo discusses how innovation is encouraged in the naval hierarchy.

Western Power is a Western Australian State Government owned corporation. Their vision is "to deliver on the changing energy needs of Western Australians, powered by community trust and the passion of our people." As an electric utility company, they are not expected to innovate much as they have not much demand to do so. However, Brendon McAtee discusses the complex innovation processes that Western Power has to improve efficiency and save time and money.

The Credit Union of Colorado used to be known as State Employees Colorado State Employees Credit Union was founded in 1934. Today, more than 130,000 people, from all walks of life, enjoy the benefits of membership in a credit union that is worth over $1.53 billion in assets. With over 80 years of experience, Credit Union of Colorado continues to innovate to keep up with the rapid changes in the financial industry. Kelly Wagner, the director of innovation, talks about her experiences and how the Credit Union of Colorado continues to innovate and compete with larger financial institutions.

The J.R. Simplot Company was started by J.R. Simplot in 1929 and later grew into giant agribusiness company. The company vertically integrated all of its processes; this allows it to control all aspects of the process from production to distribution. The innovation team at JR is in the process of completely reforming conservative company culture allowing their employees to be more innovative. Aaron Lewis and Tim Peterson believe that innovation is what helps departments overcome silos and change the company for the better.

In the NBA, the Cleveland Cavaliers were major contenders for the championship between 2014 and 2019. Even after Lebron James left for the Lakers in 2018, the Cavs are still a major leader in innovation. They have an innovation team known as the "Mousetrap" team that is dedicated to finding new ideas and improving the current processes for the Cavs. Jack Carmichael, Andy Olsson, and Aria Mirabile teach us on how the Cavs utilize their mousetrap team to gain new ideas and implement them. Their main differentiator is that they do roadshows to educate people on innovation and acquire new ideas to work on.

NASA, one of the biggest leaders in innovation, discusses how they allow their 20000 participants in their crowdsourced innovation program, NASA @ work, helps people save millions of dollars and time by communicating across different departments potentially in different timezones. Carissa Callina, Ryon Stewart, and Jeff Doi in this podcast teach us how they get and keep their community involved, how they move the process along, and the kinds of incentives they give out as rewards that aren't monetary. The innovation team helps NASA completely transform, as how the organization did things ten years ago is completely different from how NASA @ work is run today. According to Stewart and others at NASA, innovation is "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration".

The United Way is a nonprofit organization that works with over 1,200 local United Way offices throughout the country. It’s a coalition of community-based and community-led solutions that focus in three key areas: education, financial stability and health. United Way is committed to innovation in really concrete ways: they have a social innovation center, a social innovation accelerator, coaching and mentoring programs for leaders across the country, and United Way was added to the Fast Company’s list of most innovative companies for 2019. Edwin Goutier is the VP of Innovation for the United Way and he's responsible for inspiring and coordinating efforts across their global network. In this episode, Edwin teaches us about what lessons a Vice President of Innovation learns along the way. For example, innovation is not about just being the most creative person in the room. According to Edwin, the best innovators are those that also have an understanding of their business and how these ideas can be implemented to that business.

GW Professor Zoe Szajnfarber's research group seeks to understand the fundamental dynamics of innovation in the government space and defense activities, as a basis for decision making. Current projects include mapping the innovation ecosystem at NASA, ESA and the DoD, modeling the interactions between organizational and technical systems architecture over time, and valuing alternative technology investment strategies and their impact on individual preference structures. In this interview she talks about how crowdsourcing challenges can bring value and how to identify that value based on the type of problem you want to solve.

This week we’ve invited Bridie Scott, the Innovation Manager at Spotless to tell us about how they think about innovation culture. We'll be falling her journey from beginning to end - first as a swim instructor, later into compliance, and find out how it all supports her roll at Spotless, which is one of the premier Australian companies. Spotless is the largest integrated facilities management services provider in Australia and New Zealand. They have a team of more than 36,000 exceptional people and over 1,000 clients in defence; education; government; healthcare and beyond. The services they provide comprise a huge variety of offerings: from facility management, catering, and hospitality to security, electronic, and sustainability solutions and more. Learn how you nurture creative thinking and empower intrapreneurs to drive change at a large-scale company like Spotless.

In this conversation about optimism, curiosity, resilience, data and action, we speak to Navin Kunde. Dr. Navin Kunde currently leads the Open Innovation group at The Clorox Company, a US-based consumer goods company in the Fortune 500.The Open Innovation group enables business leaders and innovation teams to make better decisions by helping them access and synthesize data, learn from external experts, and build partnerships. Navin has delivered over 500 speaking engagements and workshop presentations to senior executives and their staff across North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.Before joining Clorox, Navin spent seven years at The Corporate Executive Board in Washington DC, advising Global 1000 innovation and operations executives.He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two daughters and has been known to have some of his best inspiration while thinking in a park outside even if he's being interrupted by wild turkeys.

The cost of technology has dropped so drastically that new information gathering and processing possibilities have led us to the Internet of Things. Mike Vladimer, Co-Founder of Orange’s IoT Studio, talks about the data revolution and how IoT data and personalization can be harnessed to provide real value to humans and how one achieves this goal at Orange's IoT Studio.

Listen to the FDA's journey as they transform their workplace with the help of their employees by launching 26+ challenges. They've addressed diverse subject matter; from communications, to professional development, to strategy direction, and beyond. Featuring Mark Ascione and Kimberly Taylor of the Food and Drug Administration.

In this conversation with Peter Berger, Director of Innovation at EmbraerX, we explore not just the future of urban mobility, we also learn how you build up an innovation discipline, how you organize a team, and how you track trends and concepts for technology that might not even exist yet.

Lake Trust Credit Union realized that solving key financial challenges required the participation of their staff (and someday over 100 thousand of their members). Learn how they embedded innovation training as part of their employee development and how they're using this feedback to redefine their institution's purpose. Featuring Blake Woods, Innovation Catalyst at Lake Trust Credit Union.

In the first episode of IdeaScale Nation, we interview Kelly McAuliffe and Charmaine Meiklejohn of the Queensland Police who are running an innovation program that connects their workforce of 15,000 frontline officers to the department's leadership and their strategic initiatives. The ideas from the frontline are informing solutions, but also changing culture. Find out the best practices associated with innovating in a hierarchical environment and how employee engagement can be transformational.