Wednesday 10th October 2007, 20:40Innovation - fly to the moon or reach for the stars?Innovation
Last week we held a workshop with a number of people from Business Development, Marketing and Sales. The purpose of the workshop was to look at Innovation and how we can drive innovation within A4e.
We looked at a number of examples of innovation and how they impact on our life, pumps vs. trainers, records vs. iPods, cash vs. debit cards, library vs. internet and finally landlines vs. mobile phones. Although a few in the group are still very attached to their old black pumps, a trip to the library, cash in their pockets, and a gramophone record under their arm, the vast majority of the group accepted the added value of the innovations. We also noted the way in which these products and services had created new market space for themselves which had driven market share and company growth alongside extra value for customers.
We then looked at A4e and the way we have always used innovation to drive new services to our clients in partnership with the government and local stakeholders. Our Welfare to Work model broke the mould in the mid nineties and set the standard for customer care and a fresh approach to supporting long term unemployed people. We are doing the same in France, Germany, Israel and Poland where we are accepted as setting a new standard and creating a unique market place for our services. In Childcare Business Support we developed a unique way to train childcare businesses with our rapid roll out of peripatetic trainers. With financial inclusion we have created a new space with our insights gained from the delivery of the Direct Payments service and our collaborative design of local services in partnership with local authorities. A new style of early years development, an exciting proposal for our own bank, a ground breaking venture with a legal partnership to deliver legal advice to disadvantaged communities are a few of the innovative approaches we have taken over the last few years.
Why have we been innovative? Well I believe our mission of Improving Peoples Lives is a key driver in our search to try new ways of delivering service to our customers. As a body of people we come together in A4e with a single united aspiration to Improve Peoples Lives. It is clear from the mission that improvement must sit at the very heart of our motivations and thus there is always something else that we can tweak, change and twist improve upon.
However, I think we can look beyond tweaking and twisting to that greater challenge of creating those new spaces in the market, the radically different and new service that meets the hidden need of our clients. We stand in a unique place to create these developments due to the clear insights we gain from our close working with our clients. We occupy a privileged position when we are invited to sit alongside those who face many barriers to work, difficulty in schools, hardship and financial ruin and the distress from being caught up in a legal struggle. These insights are the engine room of our Innovations. These insights must not be squandered nor ignored; they are precious to the giver and immensely valuable to us as we seek to design solutions which do not yet sit on the radar screens of governments.
We have the model of adding, deleting, raising and reducing (all sounds like gobbledegook doesn’t it) but I hope everyone will get involved. Our role may not be to fly to the moon but we can find new ways for our clients to reach for the stars.
Over the next few weeks we will be rolling out an action plan which has been designed to enable A4e to recharge our desire to create those innovation milestones and take our services into new arenas to give hope and structure to those in need.
Are you reading this and feeling frustrated because no one ever asks you for your insights, your thoughts and crazy ideas? Do you have a post it notes with some sketches of ideas that could be brought into the light and given life? Please contact me, there are individuals and communities out there tonight hoping we can build a new concept and solution based on something they told us about today.
Contact me directly if you wish to be involved and I will make sure you have the chance to engage in this process.
Many Thanks
Roy Newey
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