Digitising & Scaling

Innovation Efforts

1 Catch ideas that make a difference.

Digitising & Scaling
Innovation Efforts

Establishing a digital innovation ecosystem helps organisations to promote

cross-organisational collaboration and bring their best ideas to life faster.

How so?
You never know where the best ideas are in your organisation - until you ask
everyone. To tap into that abundance of knowledge efficiently, you need to
build a digital infrastructure for innovation that is collaborative, transparent,
and offers a simple and appealing user experience.
Tools such as idea and innovation management platforms help organisations
remove silos, flatten hierarchies and remove the distance between idea and
decision making.

We have gathered our most recent content on the topic including

inspiring cases:

1. Case Study: Developing a new digital and agile innovation process at

KUKA
2. Running a successful digital innovation challenge - Interview with Birgit
Reinhofer-Mitterer, Raiffeisen Landesbank Steiermark
3. Innovation starts with connecting people: the potential digital tools unlock
in the innovation process - Interview with Sebastian Cadell, COO at Nosco

Sebastian Cadell has more than 18 years of experience working as a management

consultant in the field of strategy, organisational development and innovation in B2B
organisations and professional service organisations. He primarily works to facilitate
client boot camps and workshops and leads the strategic development of the Nosco
platform.

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 Case Study

RE-IGNITE KUKA’S
ENTREPRENEURIAL DNA
Written by Morten Benn

Developing a new digital KUKA is a global automation corporation with sales of around 2.6 billion euro and
and agile innovation roughly 14,000 employees. The company is headquartered in Augsburg, Germany.
process at KUKA As one of the world’s leading suppliers of intelligent automation solutions, KUKA
offers customers everything they need from a single source: from robots and cells
to fully automated systems and their networking in markets such as automotive,
electronics, metal & plastic, consumer goods, e-commerce/retail and healthcare.

The Challenge

After decades of growth, KUKA AG faced a declining top-line in 2018. An internal

analysis and executive survey revealed that despite being at the forefront of re-
search in robotic automatisation, KUKA experienced challenges in commercialis-
ing their technology and delivering short term results.

The Solution

Based on the outcome of the executive survey, KUKA concluded that the group
needed an updated innovation process that is 1) digital and agile 2) supports build-
ing stronger entrepreneurial capabilities 3) consistently produce new commercially

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 viable ideas in a fast manner as well as “kill” ideas without clear evidence of an
attractive market potential or validated value proposition.

Together with KUKA’s top innovators and supported by NOSCO, the Chief Innova-
tion Officer (CIO) crafted a new process and execution plan. In order to circum-
vent long internal discussions on how to best proceed it was instead suggested
to approach it in an agile manner – test, learn and adjust if needed. Therefore, in
Autumn 2019 an innovation challenge was launched. The overall objective of the
challenge was to quickly test the new innovation process while at the same time
fill up the pipeline with fresh ideas, build entrepreneurial capabilities and develop
1-5 investment cases that can be applied within the next 4 years. Alongside the
challenge a sprint-like incubation process was created that should further evolve
the winning ideas from early stage concepts into tested and validated investment
opportunities.

We needed to build ways of testing ideas

fast and learn that failing along the way
is part of the journey.

- Ulrike Tagscherer, Chief of Innovation

The Group’s CEO as well as the CEO of Robotics supported the new process and the
campaign from the very start. This commitment created the new innovation spirit
and gave the right push for the start of this transformation.

With the help of the Nosco platform, all KUKA robotics employees from across the
globe could digitally submit their ideas and form cross organizational and multidis-
ciplinary teams. A group of managers and experts evaluated all ideas online and
selected the top 5 winning teams to go on to a 3-day bootcamp to further work on
their value proposition and explore the market potential.

After the bootcamp the top 5 teams pitched their ideas to the management team.
Two teams were selected to go on to incubation starting 3 weeks after the final of
the Innovation challenge. The incubation followed a 3 months process divided into
6 sprints in which the teams had to test their most critical hypotheses, including
interviewing potential customers, building prototypes and business models. After
every other sprint a masterplan review including a “sponsor visit” was held to eval-
uate the status of the teams and adjust the plan if needed.

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The Result

With the innovation challenge KUKA quickly tested their new digital innovation pro-
cess, which resulted in valuable insights, actionable learnings and 1 investment
case within 6 months. More than 30% of all employees participated in the chal-
lenge submitting 495 ideas, 1.629 comments and 7.323 likes while on average
visiting the platform more than 20 times. Behind the backdrop of reigniting KUKA’s
entrepreneurial DNA and filling the idea pipeline with new ideas, the high partici-
pation rate and amount of ideas submitted can be seen as a successful first step on
achieving the overarching goal.

495 7323 1629

Ideas generated Likes Comments

Out of almost 500 ideas, 2 ideas made it to the incubation. One got parked after
4 sprints as the team was not equipped to elevate the idea to the next level. The
other team managed to interview more than 25 potential customers, build an MVP
and have 3 pilot projects signed within 3 months after the challenge ended. In
September 2021 this team became the first team from the newly established in-
novation approach that has successfully moved into acceleration, where they are
preparing their market launch.

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 Interview

RUNNING A SUCCESSFUL
DIGITAL INNOVATION CHALLENGE
Written by Morten Benn

With a background in or- What is your background and current role?

ganisational development,
Birgit and her colleagues My background is a bit unconventional for innovation: I have an education in con-

managed to reach an trolling and worked as an accountant for some years. However, I quickly realized
that I did not thrive in that kind of job. I thus started studying again while working
all-time high engagement
as an assistant to a CEO in a waste disposal company that also did biogas, which
level in their innovation
was very innovative at the time. My studies were in software engineering and IT-
challenge
law and I later switched to work for KNAPP – a market leader in warehouse auto-
mation. I started designing software processes with customers and later got more
and more into working with internal processes. After heading the organizational
development department at a local university of applied sciences for two years, I
joined Wirecard who was starting a new global tech competence center. I saw how
difficult it was to find the right people with the right competencies across an organ-
ization with that many hubs around the globe so together with two international
colleagues I created the “virtual coffee machine” based on the NOSCO platform to
easily connect people and supported the Wirecard Labs with the global innovation
challenge. Just when we were about to launch the virtual coffee machine, the Wire-
card scandal happened and I had to find another job. I decided to join Raiffeisen
Landesbank to try something completely different. My official position is in group
organization. Coincidentally during my first weeks at Raiffeisen I met Hannes who
was about to start an intrapreneurship program, so I offered to share my experi-
ence and network and we quite soon decided to collaborate on launching RLBs
internal innovation challenge.

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What have been some of the key success
factors in your innovation challenge?

When working with a company in a highly regulated market like ours, people are
comfortable with being told what to do and having processes that support what
they need to do in order to not make any mistakes. It is thus critical for us to have
some clear processes and backing from the C-level. We thus started the project
with an executive workshop, bringing all board members together to agree on the
project. The way we did that was also new to them, but they were really behind it,
which also helped in our communication.

People are afraid of making mistakes, especially in a bank. You need to make them
feel safe. In fact, everyone will fail in innovation. There will only be one winning
team from our project, but people need to know that there are other ways to realize
their ideas and that all input is welcome and appreciated. We have also launched a
new continuous improvement process called fast track for small ideas coming out
of this challenge, and have made sure that the management level is involved in the
decision of these ideas as well.

I consider our project team as role models for innovation and it is our job to make it
clear that the learnings achieved are equally important. We tried to have a lot of fun
and to show that it is ok to fail. And we made sure to communicate the failures and
the fun of learning to our organization. Our board of directors was also involved in
communicating this. One of our board members published a video with him skate-
boarding in our News-channel on the platform to show that it is fun to try out some-
thing new. The caption was: “it is new and unfamiliar, but it feels really good”. This
triggered another of our board members to also publish a skateboarding video! The
signal of this is really important: that the managers are onboard, and that it is fun
to try out something new.

You had a very high engagement level in

your innovation challenge, how did you
achieve that?

We had a strong focus on communication, a huge network of formal and informal

ambassadors and some nice giveaways (pens, hoodies et al.), but we also decided
to break with conventions a bit. Instead of making sure that everyone got some-
thing, we let people know that they could get their sample, if they believed in and
wanted to support the program. It was up to them to decide if they wanted to sup-
port, instead of it being something imposed on them. We also hosted some beer
and pizza events to make it more fun for people to participate and get an opportu-
nity to communicate across hierarchies.

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 On top of that, we made middle management responsible for coming up with and
supporting ideas and we reported stats per department to middle management on
the status of their participation during the project. There is a good example from
our compliance department. Usually, compliance departments are not famous for
being the coolest people in a company, but the head of compliance is a very cool
lady and she was a great supporter. She told her department that even though they
might not come up with many ideas themselves, they were the ones to work with
them later on and thus they should support the program - and they did! They creat-
ed a super cool video motivating many people to visit our innovation platform and
become part of this challenge.

What are some of the challenges you have

experienced and how have you worked with
it?

We were quite aware of the cultural challenges that we might meet, as we both
have experience in working with more old-fashioned organizations. Therefore, I
was highly positively surprised to see how people wanted to participate, and how
they welcomed the Nosco platform. I thought they needed more instructions,
but people found out with much less help than anticipated. I think it was actually
helped along by the corona-state, because people were isolated and wanted to in-
teract. If there was no corona, it probably would have been harder to get people to
engage on a platform. And maybe because people were already forced to use new
platforms, it was easier to convince them to try out a new one.

I was highly positively surprised to see

how people wanted to participate, and
how they welcomed the Nosco platform.
I thought they needed more instructions,
but people found out with much less help
than anticipated.

Because the platform can be used whenever and wherever and even on private
mobile phones, people also posted in the evening and on weekends, which was
nice to them as systems in banks are typically only available during office hours.

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What are your key learnings from working
with innovation and how have you handled
them?

I have found that it is important to focus on the ones that support you, instead of fo-
cusing on the ones that tell you it will not work. We looked for official ambassadors
in the beginning. Our Management supported us in picking the right colleagues
for that job and we had weekly sync meetings with our ambassadors who all did a
great job supporting the challenge. Quite soon we saw that we do not only have our
official network of ambassadors but a lot more people out there promoting what
we are doing and motivating their colleagues to participate. Those people who are
passionate about innovation are the ones we focus on – instead of spending much
time convincing people in the organization that did not want to be convinced.
Another learning came through working together as a team with Nosco. I see our
collaboration as a role model for collaboration. You are not the ones telling us what
to do, but bring in your advice and guidance, letting us drive the project. It is not
over-managed: a weekly touchpoint, fast feedback via email and efficient com-
munication. We like to see this as an example of how we would like to work with
innovation projects in the future.

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 Interview

INNOVATION STARTS WITH

CONNECTING PEOPLE
Written by Anne Larsen

We met with Sebastian What potential can an innovation platform

Cadell, COO and Partner at unlock in the innovation process?
Nosco, to talk about how
innovation platforms help
At Nosco, we work with this rule of thumb that it’s 80% about establishing a good
organisations remove silos,
process and 20% about the platform – in truth, you can’t really do one without the
flatten hierarchies and re- other.
move the distance between The platform definitely plays a role in terms of connecting people. The big chal-
idea and decision making. lenge we see out there is that as companies succeed and grow larger, it becomes
more and more difficult for them to be as innovative as they were on day one – in
relative terms. What we’re trying to do through our platform and the processes that
we bring, is provide an overlay to the organisational model, both in terms of pro-
cesses and systems to help counter some of the silo effects of a large organisation.

What are the core principles of the Nosco

platform?

Nosco, as a business, is about broadening innovation and making innovation into

everybody’s business. As you grow, what often happens is that you don’t involve
people to the same extent in innovation. That means you’re not using the full inno-

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 vation potential across the organisation. You have people close to the customers
that are seeing things and getting ideas but they are “isolated” from the people in
the product development organisation who may be sitting in a different country or
a different part of the organisation.

Just to steal a good old tagline from Nokia it’s about connecting people.
Therefore, our platform’s core principle is to help remove silos. It’s about flattening
the hierarchies, reducing the distance between idea and decision making and im-
proving the ability to execute on that idea.

These silos mean that the eyes and ears

are no longer connected to the decision
making power and the brains.”

Moreover, Nosco is about keeping things simple and keeping things real. If you
look at it, innovation is in some ways brutally simple. It’s very, very different from
business as usual. That is why a lot of large organisations fail at it. Therefore, the
systems that you build have to be brutally simple as well so that they don’t get in
the way of innovation. It should not be like getting into the cockpit of a plane and
you’re spending more time trying to figure out where all of the features are than
actually doing what’s needed to succeed with innovation.

How do you work to continuously improve the

platform?
One of the big benefits is that we have both, a consulting and a software business. This
means that we are extremely close to our customers in terms of helping them become
more innovative and seeing and understanding what actually works in real life.
Our consultants are also part of the customer success team. So when you write to sup-
port at Nosco, basically you will have an equal chance of getting in contact with some-
one from the consulting team. This means that we stay in extremely close contacts with
our clients even after the project and help them succeed. It’s not just about making the
platform work while we are there and keeping the lights on.

As a result, we get to see what and how things work on a day to day basis which pro-
vides us with firsthand detailed knowledge about our customers. All of this knowledge
is brought back into the product development process. In that sense, I would say that
we are extremely customer driven in our own innovation process.
Needless to say, we use our platform for capturing and sharing all the ideas that we get.

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 How do you see the future of the platform?

If you look at innovation, there is what I would call the crowd collaboration part of in-
novation, where a lot of people are chipping in with different ideas and inputs. This is
what our platform is designed for. But there is also another part of innovation, which
is much more project based. Project collaboration, however, requires a different set of
technologies.
In terms of focus, we will definitely continue to be a social platform for ideas, as we call
it, focusing on the crowd collaboration space.
When we take decisions regarding changing the platform or adding to it, there is always
a careful decision process involved in which we ask ourselves: Does this truly add value
or does this add more complexity than it adds value to the process?
A very practical discussion could be, what should the available parameters be in an
idea evaluation form? Assessing ideas is a decision making process. It’s a commitment
process rather than an analytical process. So you don’t need full blown survey tools to
do this.
We’ve learned to use all of these very sophisticated assessment mechanisms in “busi-
ness as usual” but when we’re talking innovation, we’re back to “brutally simple”. We
need brutally simple tools to assess and discuss and decide on which ideas to take
forward. At the end of the day, innovation is about the future. And you haven’t created
the data to analyse yet.
We often discuss whether you can truly analyse whether an idea is going to succeed.
Or whether it is more a commitment exercise? For us, decision making in relation to
innovation is a commitment exercise. We believe that it’s about getting ideas in front
of the right group of people, with the right level of insight, decision making power and
resources. And it is about running a transparent decision making process of review,
discussion and decision with these decision makers.

SAY Innovation is a team effort - let us back you up.

E-mail us or schedule a call and let’s work to-
gether to jumpstart innovation in your company.

HI!
Sebastian Cadell, COO & Partner
+45 22 70 64 86
[email protected]
Sebastiancadell

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