Partnership with YOUR group

FORTYTWO is official partner of YOUR group, the first Italian company of Fractional Executive. YOUR group for each key area of ​​the company offers "on site" operational support provided by a team of fractional managers with long business experience in leading companies. YOUR group was founded in 2011 with the aim of promoting the managerial development of the Italian business system and encouraging the meeting of all parties interested in the growth of the Italian production system - both nationally and internationally.

100% online!

We are very happy and proud to confirm that all our journeys, programs and workshops about innovation, strategy and change are also available in online mode. We have worked hard to ensure, not to lose the human touch and involvement, through careful multicamera direction , use of interaction and engagement tools and digital collaboration platforms. The result of all this, leads us to have, even online, an experience similar to that in the presence, guaranteeing the maximum involvement and great participation of all people. Join us to our unique 100% innovation and strategy journeys experience!

How to create and choose innovation challenges in the company!

What would happen if corporate challenges were not fully aligned with corporate strategy and objectives? In this article you will learn how to generate challenges that generate value and create a real advantage for the company and its stakeholders.

What would happen if corporate challenges were not fully aligned with corporate strategy and objectives? In this article you will learn how to generate challenges that generate value and create a real advantage for the company and its stakeholders.

Choosing the themes and challenges on which to focus is an extremely critical step in the path of innovation, the real risk is to focus on aspects that are not perfectly aligned, or in some cases, even divergent from the strategy. It is therefore best to follow a process that reasonably assures us of making the right choices and avoid investing time and resources in the wrong direction.

First of all, it is good to distinguish between innovation theme and innovation challenge. A theme represents a generic guideline or a strategic indication to follow, while a challenge deriving from a specific theme consists of an expected problem or benefit that can be addressed and solved, but we will return to this concept in more detail later.

The choice of themes, on which to focus the innovation strategy, belongs to and usually falls within the full competence of the company management or the board. Here are the most important steps and recommendations to follow to choose the themes and create innovation challenges.

In this phase, following the logical path we have identified, it is necessary to generate a series of rough themes on which to focus one's attention, the minimum necessary requirement, as mentioned, is that they are perfectly aligned and consistent with the company's strategy. Although there is no ideal number of themes, the advice is not to exceed and in any case not to exceed ten. The link between strategy and innovation is fundamental and must not be absolutely overlooked. To define the main lines of innovation it is necessary to ask some questions and identify problems or critical issues that can be addressed and resolved through the design and execution of something new in terms of product, service or process. If we feel the need to solve a problem or want to improve something through an unusual path or system of thought, this can represent a valid innovation theme, provided it remains generic and does not contain solutions.

A few examples:

• Increase the mobile experience of our customers

• Improve the use of training contents by our students

• Improve commercial decision-making processes within the company.

• Improve delivery times of clinical test results to our patients

• Involve our customers in the ideation and creation processes of our products and services

Now is the time to define the challenges related to each innovation theme, of course it is possible that one or more challenges may be linked to an innovation theme. A challenge represents an expected problem or benefit that can be addressed or resolved. Furthermore, a challenge must never contain one or more possible solutions in its description. We want to focus on what "hurts or we want to improve", but without being conditioned by a possible concrete solution.

Generally, the generation and choice of challenges are also a typical task of the company management or the board.

It is very important to describe the challenge precisely:

How could we get ... [expected benefit or denial of the problem]

Let's see an example:

Problem: our customers invest a lot of time in check-in and this generates frustration.

Expected benefit: I would like our customers not to spend a lot of time checking in and this creates frustration.

Challenge: how can we prevent our customers from investing a lot of time at check-in and that this does NOT generate frustration?

Bad challenge (represents a possible solution): how could we be able to implement an automatic registration system in the hotel?

The verbs to be used preferably to define a challenge are:

1. Facilitate

2. Increase

3. Improve

4. Maximize

5. Guarantee

6. Reduce

7. Minimize

8. Remove

Some recommendations:

• choose challenges aligned to the company's short-term strategy. We want to generate a tangible, measurable and demonstrable impact on the company.

• avoid challenges associated with major historical problems of the company. We want to maintain a balance between demonstrating the effectiveness of the model and demonstrating its impact to avoid unnecessary difficulties in this regard.

• choose challenges that affect internal and external customers. We want to demonstrate that we can generate positive and significant changes both inside and outside the organization.

• focus on challenges that require collaboration between distinct areas of the organization, whether they are already collaborating or not. We want to demonstrate that we can facilitate collaboration and communication with a common language, thus accelerating the generation of successful proposals.

• limit and concretize the challenges to the maximum, describing them briefly and concretely.

• avoid the challenges that imply proposals that can generate business models that "attack" the company's current business model. Our goal is to complete an innovation project by facilitating the subsequent realization of the proposals defined and tested by reducing resistance to change.

The last activity to do before closing this phase is to associate each series with a series of stakeholders who are directly or interruptedly linked to the challenge, influence it or are influenced by it. This is because all the following phases, analysis, value creation, prototyping and testing are strongly linked and depend on the various stakeholders behaviours and expectations.

The phase of creation of the innovation themes and generation of the associated challenges, in an innovation path, should be completed in maximum 3 half day workshops, over a period of time that does not exceed two weeks. This is essential to give continuity to the process and not to lose the involvement and commitment of the management in such a crucial moment.

Conclusions

With this article you read how:

1) create the themes and strategic guidelines for innovation

2) correctly create and define innovation challenges

3) what are the characteristics of a innovation challenges

How to avoid launching an innovation initiative that no one is joining!

What would happen if you launched a great initiative but your colleagues didn't have to join? In this article you will find out how to engage your colleagues and get them to participate enthusiastically in your innovation initiative.

Involving people in a new innovation initiative is complex and we often risk failing in our mission. People are difficult to conquer and expectations are always very high. It is necessary to use new tools and refined procedures to stimulate our colleagues to be part of a group of innovators who can change the fortunes and history of our company, maintaining the right motivation and charge from the beginning to the end of the project.

It is very important that everyone knows what is happening in the company! The initiative to create the new innovation community must reach everyone, be clear and above all attractive. Yes but how? You must follow a well-designed path and use different marketing tools mixed wisely, defining the timing well.

The recruitment phase must last approximately two weeks from when the campaign starts, no more, if you extend this phase beyond the two weeks you risk losing your time and having very few more members, as well as losing inertia and the speed. The first ten days you will receive 80% of the applications!

Here are all the steps you'll need to follow:

• Create a logo and a visual identity for your new community, you must be easily identifiable and distinguishable! The logo must best represent the initiative and follow the company guidelines regarding communication. The new logo must be used in all materials, communication and activities of the Innovation Community.

• Create a real video campaign in which managers and company managers invite everyone to apply and participate in the casting of the new community. No more than 3/4 videos lasting about 1 minute, shot in different places and all with clear and legible subtitles and a suitable background music, not everyone will hear the audio and the subtitles are fundamental. Produce different formats to make sure that everyone can see them at their best and don't forget to loop them in the company's video corner if there are any. The video is an extremely effective and engaging call to action. Videos must be engaging, stimulating and focus on the desire for change. Herewith an example:

• Rely on the most important needs of your colleagues: being able to change things in the company, being able to deal with their managers and the company board, making their needs known and making their skills visible and finally getting out of anonymity.

• Produce eye-catching, quality brochures, roll-ups and posters with a clear and easy-to-understand call to action and leave them at all points of passage and meeting: coffee corners, meeting rooms, canteen, concierge, etc. This material must be consistent with the new visual identity of your community. I recommend many, many copies! Pay close attention to the quality of materials and printing, it is very important to create beautiful and memorable content.

• If there are multiple locations in the company or secondary offices, try to reach everyone and make sure everyone can participate. One of the qualifying elements of an innovation community is heterogeneity and the possibility for everyone to contribute regardless of role, responsibility and corporate headquarters.

• Tell people that places are limited to make participation something exclusive and elitist, innovation is not for everyone!

• Organize some small events in the company to collect sign-ups, a brief presentation, a corner at the entrance, an "innovative" lunch in the canteen, in short, everything that can allow you to get in touch directly with your colleagues to explain the initiative and leave him some material. An excellent idea could be to organize. if the company has more offices spread over the territory, a sort of tour presenting the initiative and collecting the applications directly.

• Guarantee the right sponsorship and commitment of the general management on your initiative, if your colleagues do not perceive that the top management is fully involved and supports the initiative, risks not collecting what you expect.

• Send all your colleagues an e-mail with the same digital content as the one you created to be sure, that everyone can have a chance to apply.

• Make the application quick and easy: QR code and short links on all printed and video files and a button in the mail.

• Always try to have a shared consensus and to involve all company departments in the initiative so that they encourage the participation of their collaborators and guarantee them a "free zone" to dedicate 20% of the work time to the community and to the initiatives of innovation, it is a real protected time where each member can devote himself with his team to change things in the company.

This phase is very demanding, it must be prepared with great dedication and planning, in a very limited time you have to concentrate a lot of activities and initiatives, collecting lots of adhesions to your project. Yes but how many? When can we really claim to have been successful in the recruitment phase of the participants? Is there an indicator that determines whether we have been successful or not? Actually yes! We can say that if at least 20% of the company's resources have applied to participate in the new innovation project, we have achieved an important result and a great starting point. It is good to also take into account the ability we have had in attracting profiles with different experiences and levels of seniority within the different company departments, one of the elements of success within our new community, as we said earlier heterogeneity is essential.

Always remember that the most important lever on which to base the re-recruitment process is that of change, today many people in the company feel frustrated and unhappy and would like to have an opportunity to change things, highlight themselves and show everyone how much they are worth.

Conclusions

With this article you read how:

1) involve your colleagues to participate in an innovation path in the company

2) the tools you need to use to make sure you succeed

3) if you can believe to have been successful

FORTYTWO joins Le Village by CA Milan

From January 2019, FORTYTWO is the official partner and enabler of Le Village by Credit Agricole Milan. We will deliver all our strategy & innovation design contents through workshops, mentoring sessions and dedicated programs to the resident companies and Credit Agricole Group management. Le Village by CA is an ecosystem where start-ups, large companies and the Credit Agricole group cooperate to innovate together. Born in Paris in 2014, today it is present with 24 work spaces throughout France and contributes to the economic development of each territory in which it is present, accelerating the development of start-ups and innovation of the most mature companies with which it gets in touch.

LeVillagebyCAMilan

Partnership with DISEGNO BRUTTO

FORTYTWO is the official partner of DISEGNO BRUTTO, creating Disegno Brutto in Giacca e Cravatta, the ultimate Design Thinking method dedicated to business, to enhance communication, creativity and innovation. DISEGNO BRUTTO in giacca e cravatta is available now for all the companies that want to speed innovation and creativity processes through 1 or 2 days workshops or full dedicated programs.

DISEGNOBRUTTO.IT

Partnership with The Hero Plan

FORTYTWO is now the Italian partner of The Hero Plan, the method of Daniel Vecino to build a systematic and gamified lean method to design winning and killer strategy. The Hero Plan ia an amazing journey that demonstrate through measurable and tangible results, that there is another way to make things.

Became a fighter!

TheHeroPlan.com

FORTYTWO & MURAL

 FORTYTWO has been selected as a member of MURAL Design Consultant Network. FORTYTWO uses MURAL platform with clients and teams to develop projects, communicate ideas, participate in live workshops, and exchange ideas.

mural.co

FORTYTWO joins BID

 FORTYTWO, after organizing in March 2016, the first Italian Workshop of BUSINESS INNOVATION by DESIGN with a lot of participants and full success, now is the official partner of BID for Italy, a multidisciplinary framework leading companies to Innovation and growth through Design Thinking process. BUSINESS INNOVATION by Design is built by 24 block and 3 different levels (Thinking, Method and Tools) to lead innovation initiative through all steps to succeed. From now on, also Italian companies and corporates may count on this extraordinary tool.has been selected as a member of MURAL Design Consultant Network. FORTYTWO uses MURAL platform with clients and teams to develop projects, communicate ideas, participate in live workshops, and exchange ideas.

businessinnovation.design

Strategy Design

The business model of strategic consulting, management and professional services has not changed much at all over time: it has not significantly evolved, and more importantly there is very little innovation in the methods and in the business models applied. Against this, though, everything we interact with on a daily basishas changed a great deal – new technology, new business processes and more customer-integrated revolutionary models are part of our routine and improve our lives through user-friendly, engaging and advanced experiences. The challenge to the world of consulting – which needs to tackle it head on – is that of radical change, reinventing a model with a completely new, revolutionary proposal for added value which, by using non-conventional methods and tools can once again provide real strategic value for the customer. Which is how the use of design and planning can become fundamental for corporate strategy, innovation and organisation, rethinking and reformulating concepts. In the corporate world, design thinking is BUSINESS DESIGN, which actually breaks down the application of the standard processes of creative thought and design to business:

• Creativity and Generating Ideas
• Co-Creation
• Constant Concepts
• Testing and Repeating
• Displaying and Prototyping Innovation

If we refer more directly to the strategic aspects, to all intents and purposes we have DESIGN STRATEGY. Extending the typical logics of design outside the classic field of products creates a new craft and a new consulting approach that uses design to resolve extraordinarily complex problems, engaging with customers each step of the way. A strategy can be more easily conceived and introduced into a company where there is an ongoing interaction process with all stakeholders and decision makers; this strategic tool positively leverages the experiences of the users, rather than leaving only the strategist or CEO to define the problem and seek the best solution to put to corporate management. “DEMO or DIE” is the catchphrase of companies that use prototyping techniques to implement a strategy through pragmatic behaviour following a target to reach. Planning and design therefore become a fundamental tool and underlying factor of thought and of the strategic skill set, fostering innovative and advanced business models. From the outset, this new strategic consulting model is based on the total, constant involvement of the customer’s team each step of the way – from generating the concept through to applying the strategy, through creativity and non-conventional processes. The FORTYTWO team in Italy offers a new, design-based strategic and innovative consulting model, backed by creativity and engaging, revolutionary processes, accompanying our customers on an intense and highly creative journey through to complete execution of the strategy.