“We need new business models. We need new ideas on how to work with the situation”
- Pia Emde, Project Manager at RTLZWEI.
Capturing Ideas
With a vibrant and creative team of over 200 people, generating ideas was no issue for RTLZWEI. Capturing them, however, had proved trickier.
“We have a lot of innovative people, creative people coming together, but we didn’t have a platform or a channel to funnel all these things,” said Jan Homeyer, Senior Conceptioner.
The organization had tried using techniques such as physical ideas boxes and speaking to individuals but had no method of reaching the whole company at once. An in-house project group themed around the idea of ‘Just Do It’ suggested acquiring a platform dedicated to capturing ideas and – after two years of testing and finalising an approach – RTLZWEI decided on using edison365.
The hunt for the perfect ideas platform
- Easy to collaborate
- Well-designed
- Enjoyable to use
- Based on SharePoint
“edison365 was the only platform we found that had a nice design, that was young and fun to work with, along with being part of our existing Microsoft ecosystem.”
- Pia Emde, Project Manager at RTLZWEI
Democratizing ideas
edison365 provided RTLZWEI with an ideas platform that utilized the company’s own branding. The team said that colleagues from across the business were quick to get onboard. The tool quickly built traction as it looked good, was easy to use and because the RTLZWEI team offered onboarding sessions to help users build confidence.
At RTLZWEI, ideas are grouped into challenges, such as business models, sustainability and concepts for new shows. Anyone from across the business can now share and access ideas, as well as coming up with challenges of their own.
With many teams working from home during the pandemic, colleagues from across the organization have been encouraged to comment on ideas in order to facilitate collaboration. If the team responsible for the platform see colleagues making regular comments, they will encourage them to set up meetings and take the first step towards making change. Thanks to edison365, the creation of ideas has been democratized across the business.
“It is really important for us that everyone who has a problem can open a challenge and collect ideas or solutions for that problem.” – Pia Emde, Project Manager
A Transformative Space
“What we really want to do in the future is one of the big events where we present the best ideas, and the ideas that have been implemented and were successful,” said Pia Emde, “to be transparent and tell them about what happened to those ideas, and to motivate them.”
Right now, the team are focusing on getting colleagues used to the platform. They run training sessions, Q&As and gain feedback from new users, while walking them through how to create their first idea. The team responsible for the platform meet every week to check in and develop new strategies around ideas generation.
“I would honestly say it’s like a transformation space,” said Constantin Vormwald, Business Development Manager, “we are in the TV industry, which needs ideas from all these great minds in our company… we have seen great ideas and challenges, so it’s a good process so far.”
Want to know more about this implementation?
- 260 platform users
- 121 ideas posted so far
- 22 implemented
