The largest Portuguese industrial group, one of the biggest energy companies in the Iberian Peninsula and in Europe, and the 3rd largest wind energy producer in the world has been working with LBC in several projects.

Consolidation of innovation culture

In 2016 the company corporate university, in partnership with the internal innovation department, hired LBC to promote an event inserted in the group’s Strategic Innovation Program – the bigger motto being the consolidation of the company’s innovation culture, focusing on the top executive staff, while simultaneous involving younger executives.

Thus, with the strategic innovation on the horizon, LBC has conceived a seminar divided into two parts. The first one, entitled “Challenge the Status Quo”, was attended by invited speakers such as design thinking specialist and co-author of the book “Ten Faces of Innovation”, Jonathan Littman, and the general director of COTEC Portugal (business association for innovation), Jorge Portugal, LBC’s CEO, Carlos Oliveira, and two CEOs of the company. In this first part of the seminar it was carried out a speed brainstorming exercise (to generate ideas with potential for implementation in the group), and identified the innovation personas of each participant, based on their main characteristics and an assessment developed by LBC having the ten faces of innovation as matrix. The second part of the seminar was dedicated to Everyday Innovation, an implementation model with a mini value creation forum during which the participants were able to develop the pitch of ideas generated in the previous session and to define the personas needed for its implementation.

Cross-pollination

At the same time, an Innovation Lab was carried out for the younger staff, which was led by design thinking specialist Jonathan Littman, and which took the participants to the Mercado da Ribeira (a traditional market and food court in Lisbon), where, in a cross-pollination exercise, they applied the concepts previously conveyed.

The results are not immediately visible, even because the organization – which is part of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, where companies with the best performance in matters related to transparency, sustainability and excellence in environmental and social economic management are distinguished – is on the process of carving a path to innovation. After all, innovation is made in the day to day of organizations. And “Challenging the Status Quo” is an essential step in making Everyday Innovation a reality.