Industry 4.0 or 4IR the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is synonymous with the digital revolution. New technologies like AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, big data, analytics and cloud technology, biogenetics, advanced engineering, and smart manufacturing are rapidly – and constantly – transforming our industrial and commercial ecosystems.
A decade from now, only the most innovative companies will remain relevant, today a dynamic culture needs to be a part of any corporate DNA. Businesses need to be able to command new technologies and know-how to maintain and capture new markets.
This article focuses on ICL Group’s exceptional BIG (Business Innovation for Growth) program, a revolutionary internal innovation accelerator program that became the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. It will explore how structured employee-driven engagement can create a new culture of innovation in a global company, optimizing existing processes and stimulating business growth.
Introducing ICL Group’s BIG Program
ICL Group is a leading global specialty minerals company and one of the largest fertilizer manufacturers in the world. It employs over 13,000 people and runs dozens of complex operations across the globe. ICL has always prized innovation as a corporate ethic but realized that innovative energy transcended existing silos and was separate from day-to-day managerial structures. Inventive force and initiative must be encouraged, nurtured, and channeled within a clear framework.
ICL Group’s approach to innovation is that every employee is potentially a subject matter specialist; an expert who can contribute innovative ideas within their spheres of knowledge, interest, and practical experience. The more diverse the workforce, the wider the range of perspectives, ideas, and insights produced.
Such employee innovations can span the entire operational chain, from health and safety and procedural improvements, up through the identification of new products, gaps in the market, and or ideas for disruptive technologies. The challenge for ICL Group was to create a structure for innovation that employees could easily access and that would objectively evaluate each new idea according to standard criteria. The next essential was a pipeline to rapidly assign approved concepts to business units and launch them as properly resourced projects.
ICL Group also realized that projects needed clear methodology, metrics, and KPIs, with standardized milestones and review points. The BIG program was developed to meet these requirements and to drive innovation in alignment with ICL Group’s wider business strategies – and on a profitable basis. The key goals of the BIG program can be summarized as:
- Enhancing employee ideation
- Accelerating execution
- Improving collaboration
The BIG Impact
ICL Group’s BIG has attracted major attention with its quantifiable successes. The Harvard Business School featured BIG as a case study of how structured employee engagement can drive sustainable innovation. Within three years, BIG founder Eduard Croitoru expanded the program from 3,500 ICL Group employees to all 13,000, and in the process expanding BIG into 4 additional languages.
Croitoru also had to assign full-time innovators to the program with the necessary professional backgrounds to evaluate new ideas and to meet and support the challenge of identifying the technologies of an expanded program and integrating them with the human infrastructure.
Since its launch in January 2020, BIG has outperformed all expectations, the latest figures released by ICL Group show that
- More than 7,000 new idea submissions
- 2,300 funded projects
- More than 1,800 completed projects
BIG’s completed projects have realized over $400 million in annual operating income and generated over 200 potentially patentable ideas, with over 35 patents already filed.
Key Steps Towards Fostering a Culture of Innovation
Many companies embrace innovation initiatives in fits and starts or feign cooperation with the concept. The most genuinely innovative companies define the concept and goals of innovation and analyze how their existing corporate culture(s) and structures can be adapted to instill innovation and channel it constructively.
- Create internal accelerators or similar innovation programs. Monitor their progress and performance and stimulate employee feedback.
- Promote and make known the initiatives within the company, and emphasize that the programs are inclusive and that all employees are encouraged to engage.
- Demonstrate that programs use standardized criteria and methodologies and are entirely transparent. Explain that successful contributions will always be rewarded but failures will never be stigmatized.
- Invest in leadership support and mentorship. Consider allowing employees to devote a proportion of their working hours to private research innovation projects (that align with company goals).
- Strike a functional balance between human creativity and technology.
- Determine the company policy to “extra-corerestrial” innovation (ideas that deviate or extend beyond the company’s core businesses). The most innovative and forward-thinking companies tend to favor a degree of outbound innovation.
When employees have easily accessible frameworks for submitting ideas, no fear of failure (or anxieties that others will claim credit for their work), and the knowledge that their initiative will be rewarded, innovation will flow. Human Beings have a natural capacity for innovation – it’s how we survived and evolved as a species. The extent to which innovative potential is realized within a company depends on structures, security, and incentives.
The Benefits of Employee Engagement Through Structured Innovation
The potential financial and strategic benefits of structured innovation are evident. ICL Group’s BIG has demonstrated that innovation programs can deliver impressive ROI within a short time. Other, broader benefits are more challenging to quantify, but feedback suggests that such benefits include improved employee retention, increased creativity with a continuous flow of breakthrough ideas, and problem-solving across the board – a new highly analytical and entrepreneurial ‘Can do – Will do’ mindset emerges.
Employees quickly realize that they can influence their operational areas, as well as shape the strategic direction of the company. They also understand that positive contributions are met with recognition and tangible rewards, this is highly empowering within a corporate setting and has a positive effect on employee morale.
The Future of Innovation
Innovation accelerators like ICL Group’s BIG, help established companies remain relevant in a constantly evolving ecosystem. Ultimately, a company’s most precious resource is the people who work for it. Companies with a culture that enables instinctive problem-solving enjoy an immediate advantage in a highly competitive market. But employee-driven innovation doesn’t just deliver a return on investment through operational optimization and new business, it strengthens companies through improved loyalty and resilience, preparing for future challenges and market shifts.
Future competitiveness will increasingly depend on short lead times between identifying needs and acquiring and implementing the technologies and solutions to meet new targets. Employee engagement and innovation is a potent, effective, and readily obtainable means to that end. All that companies need to harness dynamic energy are the functional structures to unleash the creativity of their people and channel it into a culture of innovation.
