Next Level Innovation Blog

Workshop results

Live blogging at Diversity & Innovation workshop, part 4

For the last hour, the group has been broken up in several smaller groups, to do some active thinking in a workshop. Theme is "What can improve the feeling of safetyness in the everyday surrounding?"

A bit difficult to bring this across on a blog, but the teamspirit has certainly been activated here... The results in short:

Group 1. Safetyness is a feeling, everyone needs to be connected. Listen to the people and act together to improve it.

Group 2. Give the local government officials a responsibility as accountmanager for one specific area.

Group 3. Use mobile phone to be connected to the neighbourhood, create more community spirit.

Group 4. 7 b's (in dutch): Buurtfeest (community party), buurtwaarschuwingen (neighbourhood warningsystem), beloon & bescherm de held (reward and protect the hero), begin bij jezelf (start yourself), behandel elk incident op zichzelf (treat every incident as a seperate one), benoem behang (call a watch), boeven vangen (catch the thieves).

Group 5. Fear is in the mind... So think positive and start communicating with each other. Neighbourhood bulletin board, move communication more to internet (create internetspot next to rubbishbins).

Group 6. Lighting, driving speed, neighbourhood buddy-project, getting to know each other...

Feel free to ask questions and proceed with the discussion by commenting.

The role of diversity in innovation

- already the third presentation, by Annemieke Roobeek.

Live blogging at Diversity & Innovation workshop, part 3

The most people in the current work environment are 'knowledge workers'. Today, our companies still haven't apapted to fit their needs...

Already upcoming is a new new, younger generation of talents (between 16-25 years old), who think totally different than the 'knowledge' people. They're real multitaskers, the creative generation, but in companies they're not really integrated. All the ages should be better mixed, younger people should be more integrated in teams to bring their creativity.

Annemieke tells us she thinks women are too modest when it comes to work and career opportunities. "Show people what you can do, what you think, don't be afraid to share your ideas..."

She talks about new leadership, which should be more enterpreneur-like, showing emotions, charisma, etc. Networking is key to be innovative, teams need to collaborate. To create a really diverse, new team people should apply to the job/project. If you ask managers to recommend people, you always come to the same lists. New talent needs to find it's way up more quickly, this is a risk, but also necessary to create real innovation.

Open innovation in practice

Matthieu van Bilsen, IBM Benelux Innovation leader, is now on the spot, talking about "open innovation in practice".

Live blogging at Diversity & Innovation workshop, part 2

He starts his story by telling us the world is getting smaller, talents can be found all over the world, work can be spread all over the world. This is mostly possible because of far-reaching implementation and adaptation of technology. Transferring information all over the world is becoming easier all the time.

IBM's CEO study comes to the table once again. The CEO quote of the day: "Collaborative innovation separates winners from the losers". Won't go into the details, since we've talked about this already on this blog. The people here get a nicely printed copy, but of course a download is available for you...

One project IBM is involved in, is the Lofar project. Sensors can pick up all kinds of signals from the air, earth etc. Somewhat complicated for me, but if you'd like to know more, check the website.

IBM Innovation Jam, a very big brainstorm with IBMers, relatives, friends, etc. is also an example of collaboration for innovation. 31 idea's have now been selected to have a futher look at. Some will be chosen and $100 million dollar will be spent on this by IBM. More info on the IBM worldwide website.

Diversity at the top

and the impact it has on the innovative power of the organisation.

Live blogging at Diversity & Innovation workshop, part 1

This is the title of the kick-off by the disscussionleader for today, Trude Maas-de Brouwer. She tells us that she started working as junior, working quite hard, and incidentally developed into a succesfull career woman. "At one point I noticed I was the only women there." Obviously a trigger to think about the subject diversity...

Diversity is broader than only gender. Age, culture, knowledge, circulation in jobs, etc. are also important factors. Because this develops more and more, today's world asks open business models and open thinking.

Trude thinks we should be working with and thinking about talent much more creatively. Everyone's talent is valuable, everyone's got it's own talent with which he or she can be successfull. An example she brings forward:

Ordina has it's software tested by autistic persons, who ar happy to work and  have the right skills for the job. It's an example of thinking the other way around, thinking 'what can people do?' other than 'what can't they do?'

Live blogging at Diversity & Innovation workshop

IBM Netherlands and Opportunity in Bedijf have organised a workshop (dutch link) today, with the theme "Diversity & Innovation".

To give the people who aren't here some insight in the topic and what's being discussed this afternoon, I'm doing some live-blogging. Of course, you can also join the discussion online by commenting on these blogposts...

Speakers today:

• Trude Maas-de Brouwer, Director Opportunity in Bedrijf and President Hay Vision Society
• Matthieu van Bilsen, IBM Benelux Innovation leader
• Annemieke Roobeek, Strategy and transformation management University Nijenrode, Director of MeetingMoreMinds and initiator of BLU-BlueLifeUnlimited
• Linda Linders, IBM Women in Blue
• Caty Asscher, Psychologist, Asscher Consultancy

Innovations in Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility has changed over the years: the "social team events" (in which teams joined hands for a day or so to support a good course) were sometimes extended to partnerships or alliances  between corporations and NGO's. The  partners committed to collaborate for some time on a defined project which matches the core business and supports the desired organisation profile.

I expect that future partnerships will focus even more on mutual  benefits for  both partners thus transforming the donor - recipient relationship to a win win transaction between equal partners.  Explicitly stating mutual  expectations, milestones and results demonstrates the value add for the parties involved and provides a base for sustainable relations

Live commenting at the Weblog stand

The weblog is really starting to take off here at the Next Level event in High Tech Campus Eindhoven! Many enthousiastic reactions have come back to us from guests that think it is really powerful to have information up instantly after a session. Here is a guest that is commenting on the Healthcare blogpost at the Weblog stand.

Community Social Responsibility session

Yesterday, I attended the Next Level session Community Social Responsibility (CSR) and it was very interesting. At 12.30 pm the participants started to come in. In the IBM Forum Amsterdam there was a lunch of ‘fair’ food.

After a warm welcome by IBM On Demand Community Manager Warner Dijkhuizen, Ms Corien Jonker from the political party CDA started her speech.
After the introduction an interesting talk about Community Responsibility in Business followed, by Vincent van Assem from ABN AMRO. This plenary session was ended by a speech from Judith van de Voort, doctoral student Erasmus University Rotterdam.

After a short break the 3 workshops begun. I took part of the workshop ‘World Community Grid’. Learned a lot about grid technology and the results of this calculation. The World Community Grid really helps solving humanitarian problems.
Mr. van der Struijf was telling us about the Human Proteome Folding, this research project is accelerated by grid technology. He showed us some results and it took my interest because this made the project World Community Grid more clear and visible for layman.

Next Level event photo's

The photoalbum for Next Level event is now online. Every day photo's will be taken of the different sessions and will be updated regulary. If you'd like to have your own pictures added, please contact the Blog moderator.

Look at the pictures and feel the atmosphere...

Next Level event Photoalbum

Maatschappelijk Verantwoord Ondernemen verandert

Maatschappelijk Verantwoord Ondernemen heeft de laatste jaren een verandering doorgemaakt: van "verantwoorde team uitstapjes" (waarbij een team zich een dagdeel gezamenlijk inzette voor een goed doel), naar "partnerships" of allianties tussen een bedrijf en een not-for-profit organisatie. Partners werken bijvoorbeeld gedurende langere tijd samen aan project waarmee beide partijen graag worden geassocieerd.

Ik verwacht dat in de toekomst meer aandacht komt voor de wederzijdse benefits van de deelnemers. Het expliciet benoemen van de verwachtingen, de mijlpalen en de behaalde resultaten voor alle partijen, toont de meerwaarde voor de deelnemers en vormt daarmee de basis voor de continuiteit van het maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen.