Open Innovation

← back

Harnessing the power of people in your organisation to drive innovation. A step by step guide and toolkit to manage ‘Open Innovation Challenges’ in your organization

Three phases of Open Innovation Programme

• Phase 1 – Framing Challenge Statements

  a. Info session
  Info session for prospective challenge owners (recruitment of challenge owners with organisation)

  b. 1 to 1 Interviews or online survey
  Interviews with challenge owners to understand their problem statement

  c. Challenge statements
  Synthesising interview insights into clear and actionable challenge statements.

• Phase 2 – Recruiting Innovators

  a. Outreach
  Create a clear and inviting outreach materials that explains the whole competition to people in organisation

  b. Recruitment
  Manage people signing up for the challenges

  c. Team Formation
  Forming balanced teams people who have signed up for the programme and matching them with challenge owners.

• Phase 3 – Executing Innovation Hackathon

  a. Innovation Design Workshop

  • Interactive session where challenge owners describe their problems in their own words

  • Workshop to familiarise with innovation tools

  • Designing research activities and dry run of the process
    

  b. Guided Solution development

  • Research

  • Ideation and Prototyping

  • Pitch Preparation
    

  c. Final Pitch

  • Team presentation

  • Judges evaluation

  • Competition results

Example of Challenge Statements

• Challenge Owner 1

  Attracting Talent (Fresh Grads)
  How can we understand prospective employees’ requirements in order to attract young talent (fresh graduates)?

  
  What are we trying to solve?
  Attracting young talent to a company
  It is challenging to attract new talents for two main reasons:

  • Food manufacturing industry is seen as harsh & unattractive

  • Company has a limited understanding of what young talents want and how to reach out to them

  
  “How can we make ourselves attractive to attract future employees?” (Key verbatims from scoping interview)

• Challenge Owner 2

  Attracting Talent (young, local)
  How can we better attract and retain young, local talents for the factory operations?

  What are we trying to solve?
  Difficulties with business expansion due to insufficient manpower
  
  It is difficult to attract local talents for multiple reasons, for example:

  • Food manufacturing industry is seen as unattractive

  • People are used to higher hourly rates during covid that FM companies can’t keep up with.

  Company often employs foreign workforce (Malaysian) but they also tend to leave after 6-10 months.

  “Singaporeans are very choosy, I don’t know why, they don’t want to work for Food Manufacturing companies.” (Key verbatims from scoping interview)

• Challenge Owner 3

  Automation
  How can we identify gaps and opportunities to automate an ordering process through automation?

  
  What are we trying to solve?
  Gap in productivity and efficiency of the ordering process.

  Par International intends to streamline and automate its supply chain process, through AI, to increase its productivity and efficiency.

  A purchase order process comprises of:

  • Purchase Order Confirmation

  • Issuing Delivery Note

  • Notifying the warehouse of New Order

  “My desired result would be to streamline and automate the operations from ordering to warehouse distributions.” (Key verbatims from scoping interview)

Example of 5 Days Hackathon Programme

It is not five full days but spread over five days

• Day 1 – Design Thinking Workshop

  Get familiar with challenge, teams and design thinking

  1. Introductions - challenge teams and challenge owners.

  2. Challenge intro by companies - in their own words

  3. Intro to Design Thinking

  4. Dry run using Design Thinking Tools

  5. Prepare for Field Research

• Day 2 – Field Research Adventure

  Step into the shoes of a user researcher for a day

  1. Interview users

  2. Post field work synthesis session - synthesise key learning and insights from the days research work

• Day 3 – Ideation & Prototyping

  Generate ideas to develop solution for your challenge

  1. Reframe the problem

  2. Generate Ideas

  3. Develop solution prototypes

  Notes:

  • Self-organise your respective teams to meet for this session

  • Follow steps given in the toolkit

  • Use field research insights

• Day 4 – Pitch Development

  Develop a convincing pitch to present your solution

  1. Prepare the pitch

  2. Practice the pitch

  Note:

  • Self-organise your respective teams to meet for this session

  • Follow guidelines given in the toolkit

• Day 05 – Pitch Presentation

  Present your solution pitch to challenge owners

  1. Respective team pitch their solution idea to judging panel

  2. Judges compile results

  3. Results are announced

  4. Drinks and networking

  Notes:
  Each team gets 5 minutes to present, followed by 5 to 7 minutes Q&A by judges if required

Please send us an email by clicking on the button above if you are interested in the course.