Changing organisations

Abstract

To stay competitive in future businesses, the Pon Equipment and Pon Power-group introduced Area 52 two years ago. An independent business unit operating with full focus on starting- and improving innovations within the business group. In here, the innovation strategy is aligned with the long-term strategy of the PEPP-group and an innovation process is introduced as well. All innovative initiatives that contribute to improving the core-business of the companies, should be created in the operating companies itself. These are called ‘Area 1 initiatives’. Innovations related to the core business but are more or less new, get support from Area 52. These are called ‘Area 2’ initiatives. Innovations that deal with new business models and eventually might compete with the current business, are developed within Area 52 and are called ‘Area 3 initiatives’. Their vision is that operating companies in the group should be self-regulatory for their Area 1 and Area 2 innovations. To this day however they don’t have a structure or process for this. Therefore the challenge has been to design a framework that enables operating companies of Pon Equipment and Pon Power to set up their own innovation process, and support employees to be involved with innovation. The framework enables, in three steps, operating companies to support their employees to be involved with innovation. First it is about understanding the fields of innovation. Second, these fields can be connected and made concrete by choosing innovation tracks. Lastly, after a track is defined, an innovation process can start. These steps were validated by employees from both Pon Power Netherlands, and Pon Equipment Norway. They see the added value of the different parts of the framework. However, the last challenge is to keep people involved, to get the mass of the organization tipping towards involvement with innovation. There are several types of employees in the organization. Every operating company has to appoint an innovation expert. He or she should understand different types of people; their current behavior and the desired behavior. By looking at different triggers, they can all be activated in a different way. The innovation expert has all the knowledge about the framework and has complementing tools and processes ready to start a track of innovation. When enough people are involved in a track, and stay involved in new tracks, the mass might tip towards an innovative mindset within the operating companies.