Business transformation is the hot topic of the moment. In the past few weeks, the acronym VUCA for “volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous” had never been more meaningful. In this context, it has become crucial for companies to demonstrate innovation, agility and creativity.
For 7 years, we have been helping companies to accelerate their transformation. Today, while companies are well aware that digital is inevitable to survive the crisis, the transformation raises some questions. Which technologies? How to be data-driven but respect privacy? How to innovate to reduce your environmental impact? The challenge today lies in aligning teams, especially in a context where co-creation and trust is more difficult because of social distanciation measures.
Align teams and innovate remotely
Remote work will become the norm. The American social network Twitter has already announced that it “wants its employees to be able to work from where they feel most creative and productive”. Other companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft have also announced plans to expand their remote working programs. According to a survey of CEOs and leaders of the Bay Area Council, one-fifth of Silicon Valley companies are planning to transition to full remote work policies and 89 percent are planning at least partial remote work polices.
However, innovation decisions, because of the risk they involve, are based on trust and collaboration. This is what characterises the most innovative companies today. Open spaces have developed over the last decade precisely to encourage opportunities to interact among teams.
How to build trust with teams that you almost never meet, and with whom you only interact by messages or videoconferences? How to recreate moments of connection, inspiration and co-creation in this context of social distancing?
At Innovation Is Everywhere, we have organized learning expeditions all over the world over the past five years. We have observed how these moments of sharing on the field with innovative companies, combined with moments of reflection, ideation and networking, have helped to build trust within the management teams, and to align them on a shared vision for the transformation of their business.
Because we do not know if health constraints will be enforced for a long time, we have imagined new formats to keep business leaders inspired, to engage their teams remotely, and maybe in the future even welcome new hires into their teams. Our team has imagined formats suited to these new constraints: shorter learning expeditions organized to discover neighbouring ecosystems, and virtual learning expeditions.
Learning expeditions in small committees
In our opinion, face-to-face interactions remain key to build trust within teams, in particular within directing teams or with your partners. We always limit the size of the groups when we organize learning expeditions in order to allow for more intimate and rich meetings. When we have large groups, we divide the participants into teams and organize them by theme or transformation challenge, which makes the program even more relevant for the participants.
Furthermore, as travel restrictions will prevent long distance traveling for a while, and even if China or Israel have boiling ecosystems, there are also dynamic and innovative ecosystems in France or in Europe. Paris is one of the most inspiring ecosystems on topics of interest such as the food transition, corporate social responsibility / sustainability, or new ways of working. We have also organized more and more learning expeditions in France and Europe in recent years. Neighboring and easily accessible countries like Amsterdam and Berlin also have a lot to offer in terms of inspiration.
Learning expedition CSR / corporate social innovation organized in November 2019 in Amsterdam. Meeting with Patagonia.
Digital learning expeditions
Virtual reality could have had its moment, but is still not ready. What’s left is a growing number of tools for videoconferencing, collaboration or networking. Some of them are surprisingly good in terms of experience, as they recreate and even improve the experience of co-creation (Miro, for example) or networking (Remo is very impressive!).
The Remo tool allows you to recreate the conference experience with unique networking opportunities.
Innovators can share their experience, with live walkthrough or live demo if it’s relevant, just as they would do it during a physical meeting. Q&A is made easier by technology. With energetic facilitators, short sessions, fun networking moments and virtual coffee breaks, these digital learning expeditions become excellent substitutes, with considerable advantages: no limitation in the number of employees participating, and the possibility to explore multiple ecosystems around the world at the same time.
They are ideal if your goal is to generate inspiration and ideation in your teams or with your partners, and to engage a maximum of people.
To conclude, we are convinced at Innovation Is Everywhere that the format of learning expeditions, face-to-face or online, is still and will be even more relevant and strategic than ever in the coming months, in order to recreate these moments of reconnection, reflection and trust between scattered and increasingly isolated teams.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you’d like to know more about our digital learning expeditions!