Open Innovation
Innovation across hierarchical levels and company boundaries
Open innovation is when a company allows a wide variety of parties and departments to participate in the innovation process. This means nothing other than what the title says: the process is opened up and everyone can play their part. When a company lives open innovation, not only the top management works on the future of the company in a secret chamber, but also all other employees, external specialists, start-ups, other companies, universities and you. This becomes more and more important with the increasing complexity and speed of the business world, as the experts in the departments are the most able to see and assess possible development potential.
Innovation as an answer to the challenges of our time
We are also actively working on a global innovation network so that we can meet the challenges of our time. Because as the complexity of tasks increases, the time available for decision-making is continually decreasing.
Anyone can be an innovator
At Baloise, anyone can already submit projects, including interns and working students. These are then implemented independently - with the help of other departments - by the respective initiators. We also work together with external partners and companies. With these we can also develop products to jointly satisfy the needs of customers. On our Open Innovation website we show examples of current innovations and projects. Our goal is that in the future you too can submit an idea, but we still need some time for this. The goal of opening the innovation process is to increase the number of good ideas and projects, as the Innovation Funnel shows.
What is the Innovation Funnel?
The concept of the Innovation Funnel shows a strategic approach to how many ideas can lead to few good projects. Numerous studies assume that only about 10-20 percent of all ideas are successful. Therefore, all the more ideas are needed to be able to implement projects in the end.
Promoting the entrepreneurial spirit with the Kickbox concept
This is precisely the approach adopted by Baloise. In cooperation with Swisscom, for example, we use Adobe's Kickbox concept to promote intrapreneurship and fill the funnel with ideas from employees. With Kickbox, we motivate our employees to implement their own ideas and check them out. In just two months, participants learn how to create a profitable business model and confirm or reject the idea in initial market tests. In less than a year, a half-baked idea can be turned into an advanced project. External companies and start-ups also have various opportunities to work with us and thus benefit from our know-how. You can read more about this in our next blog article.