These innovation case studies will uncover a secret weapon that your organization might not be leveraging to its fullest!

It’s amazing to think that a lot of organizations still don’t realize they’re sitting on a mountain of untapped potential. That is, they fail to recognize the tremendous value their own community of employees, customers, partners, and others can bring to the table. The collective creativity from this innovation ecosystem is a secret weapon that they’re not leveraging, which translates to missed opportunities and lost value. So, what does this all mean exactly?

Here’s the thing: Your community has ideas. Lots of ideas. But what are you doing to source these ideas? And to evaluate them? And to prototype them? And, most importantly, to commercialize them? Your employees are a great place to start: after all, if there’s one group of people that understands your business inside and out, it’s your workforce. They’re the closest to your organization’s customers, offerings, and operations. So trust them, because they know what could positively — or negatively — impact your organization’s future. But let’s say your organization can’t find a solution to a specific problem using internal resources. Well, you can work with external networks of talent and expertise by extending your crowdsourcing efforts beyond your organization’s walls.

This is why it’s important for leadership to recognize the power of crowdsourcing: it’s a sustainable process for repeatedly unlocking business value. And to think that all you have to do… is ask!

Now, there are many ways of approaching crowdsourcing, because different organizations have different needs. But, for the sake of simplicity, we’ll start with the basics: you absolutely need the right mindset AND technology. This means having leadership that trusts and motivates everyone to share, collaborate on, and prototype their ideas, no matter how crazy they may initially sound. This is the kind of inclusive work environment that drives cross-functional collaboration and fosters sustainable ideation, both of which are necessary to build a culture of innovation. Bringing all of this together is collaborative innovation software, which is specifically designed to take an idea from inception all the way to realization.

Because there’s just no better way of explaining something than through real-world examples, let’s look at 4 jaw-dropping innovation case studies where companies are using this very mindset and technology to create a more adaptive, creative, and resilient culture of innovation.

Innovation Case Study #1: Unbossing the Environment at Novartis

As part of its UNBOSSED culture, Novartis, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, has an internal startup program called Genesis Labs, which invites associates to submit their “crazy, transformative ideas” for accelerating scientific innovation and reimagining medicine. However, as a multinational organization with groups spread across different locations around the globe, Novartis faced the challenge of bringing together 20,000 R&D associates to effectively collaborate on their ideas. They had the right mindset, now all that was missing was the right technology. 

As such, they used Planbox’s agile innovation management platform to scale and manage this bold initiative enterprise-wide, and in so doing facilitated cocreation to ensure the best and most creative ideas would rise to the surface. The results? Aside from a handful of groundbreaking concepts being developed, Novartis, to its surprise, observed more than a third of associates making new connections with colleagues in other disciplines and divisions through the Planbox platform, effectively expanding their professional networks to form new value-creation relationships.

Here’s what they had to say about it:

“We saw colleagues who felt willing and safe to provide comments and feedback, make new connections and build their network. Then, of course, we saw many ideas. Partnering with Planbox truly helped us advance UNBOSSED innovation at Novartis.” – Aimee Reynolds, Genesis Labs Project Liaison, Novartis

anglo american innovation case study

Innovation Case Study #2: Unearthing Innovative Ideas at Anglo American Brazil

Innovating like it’s second nature: that’s where Anglo American is right now in its innovation journey. This leading global mining company knows that ideas are the lifeblood of a thriving organization, but without a system to make something of them, opportunities to create valuable solutions are lost. Anglo American has no shortage of ideas though; couple that with its Business Improvement and Innovation initiatives, and you can see that the company has the right mindset. What they lacked, however, was a dedicated platform to take their innovation game up a notch.

With Planbox, Anglo American was able to bring ideas to light in a collaborative and user-friendly way, which was key to inspiring creativity throughout the organization and empowering cocreation between employees and various business units. Their goal was to make innovation significantly more engaging, visible, and accessible so that everyone is more aware of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of every idea being developed. As a result, Anglo American dramatically improved collaboration company-wide, and has since unearthed hundreds of insights, some of which have translated into game-changing innovations in areas ranging from moisture measurement, community safety and readiness, and transportation and logistics.

Here’s what they had to say about it:

“One of the foundations of collaboration is innovation, and we were looking for a platform to enable quick and easy communications between all people in the business to understand which initiatives are going on, to exchange ideas, to improve existing initiatives, or to create new ones. Planbox is up to the task of being this platform for Anglo American Brazil, and it is helping us improve this collaboration among our teams.” – Hamilton Oliveira, Business Improvement and Innovation Interim Manager, Anglo American Brazil

barton malow innovation case study

Innovation Case Study #3: Building an Engaged Culture at Barton Malow

Here’s a unique innovation case study that showcases the use of game mechanics to solve business problems and engage users in a fun way: Barton Malow, a leading employee-owned construction management company, turned innovation… into a game! Previously, Barton Malow found it challenging to ensure a consistent and engaging experience for employees to share their improvement initiatives and collaborate on their ideas. Moreover, management wanted to uncover employee pain points and really understand which tools were failing them.

To improve collaborative problem-solving between business units on these challenges, Barton Malow rolled out a program called the “Innovation Game” to more than 2,000 employees spread throughout North America. Using Planbox, they set up a points-based system linked to recognition, prizes, monetary rewards, and a portion of annual bonuses. Long story short, employees were incentivized to share and work together on their ideas, as well as perform specific activities like attending webinars, filling out surveys, or volunteering for an event, among others. 

This resulted in a dramatic increase in participation, which helped to build a more engaged culture of innovation that produced a whopping 29,400 ideas, some of which have led to notable improvements and actionable solutions in the field where construction takes place.

Here’s what they had to say about it:

“The main benefits to using Planbox have been the increased level of engagement across our organization, the diverse group of ideas that have been developed, and just having an easy way to incentivize the type of activities and interactions we are seeking. Using Planbox has improved our innovation culture, and we started hearing ideas that we would not have otherwise known about.” – Daniel Stone, Innovation Manager, Barton Malow

new zealand hemp innovation case study

Innovation Case Study #4: “Hempowering” Collaboration at New Zealand Hemp Industries Association

Here’s an innovation case study about New Zealand’s first-ever hemp ideation challenge: New Zealand Hemp Industries Association (NZHIA), a non-profit society that supports the growth and development of all aspects of the island country’s hemp industry, partnered with Webtools Agritech, a leading provider of Agriculture and Transparency software solutions and consulting services. Together, they set out to develop groundbreaking hemp products, discover new uses for hemp, and identify innovative ways to produce, process, and manufacture what they see as the crop of the future. They needed to find white space opportunities quickly, but didn’t have time to reinvent the wheel.

So, how did they do it? By “hempowering” collaboration, of course! Using Planbox’s Discovery Central platform, a front-end innovation tool designed to uncover the highest impact opportunities in the shortest possible time frame, NZHIA launched a nationwide challenge that brought together researchers, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and other parties to contribute and collaborate on ideas. The challenge received 391 ideas, and from those, 31 were turned into transformational innovations, ranging from nappies, to high-end dog treats, to eco-friendly homeless shelters — all of which are hemp-based.

Here’s what they had to say about it: 

“Working with the Planbox team to configure the platform for an industry objective instead of an individual company objective demonstrated the power of collaboration in an emerging industry, which is often spoken about but rarely ever accomplished. The Planbox structure facilitated a lot of cooperation and working together, and it was easy to see the size of the opportunity, which is much bigger than just New Zealand.” – Melissa Baer, CEO, Webtools Agritech

And there you have it: 4 companies with some truly astonishing innovation case studies. These organizations understand the inherent value of community engagement. This isn’t to say that everyone will be creative all the time, or that every idea sourced will instantly be the next big thing. It takes a lot of thinking and fine-tuning to get that one good concept, and it’s that very concept, among many others, that will lead to a breakthrough innovation or solve that critical business problem once and for all. You just need to approach it, as the aforementioned companies currently do, with the right mindset and technology. From there, everything else will follow, and you’ll be well on your way to building a future-fit organization.