Creating A World Class Innovation Center For Colgate
Picture this. Colgate’s Latin American Innovation team had grown to over 45 people. We were bursting at the seams in decrepit offices in a 1950’s factory in Mexico City. Conditions and morale were sinking fast.
The call came in from the Division President. We’re moving offices. Here's an opportunity to create the best Innovation Center in the world. Oh, you’ve got 30% less space per person and must be within Corporate expenditure levels (think generic furniture…)
As an Innovation team we saw this as a perfect opportunity to apply our best practice innovation techniques on ourselves to create our new home.
Step One; Purpose. Assembling the team to bring the vision to life. We carefully selected a cross functional team of innovators & insight people who would eventually work in the space, as well as key allies like Human Resources who could smooth the approvals through the Corporate process. Very important criteria were youth, diversity and a hunger to do something different, something better.
Step Two; Jobs To Be Done. Defining what are the ‘problems’ that the new space must solve. We spoke extensively with the Innovation community about their physical and emotional requirements for the new space. We then matched what people had said by observing their behaviours. Interestingly there were quite a few differences. An example being we heard ‘more offices because we’re always on conference calls’. Our observation saw was people were on the phone for less than 10% of their day. The underlying driver was people were very concerned about their privacy
Step Three; Landscape & Growth Opportunities. Like when developing new products & services, it’s vital to choose a partner who has the right expertise and experience. We chose an architecture firm who were awesome designers and who brought bring a fresh modern perspective. They showed us the best practices around the world and gave insights on the future of work. Really importantly they took the time to understand us - their ‘consumers’ - how we worked and what our needs were.
Step Four; Prioritization & Resourcing. We collated all our wants and prioritized them into the final design brief. Physically a bright, airy, light inspiring environment. More team and breakout rooms, as Innovators spend a lot of time in multifunctional teams managing projects. To be close to each other to enable collaboration, but also have personal space. To have a theme that embraced all the countries in Latin America. A Mexican theme would have been off putting to other key markets like Brazil and Colombia.
Step Five; Solutions! The really fun and challenging piece. The Big Idea was to create a Zócalo, or a town square which you will find in any town in Latin America. It’s the life of the town, where people come to socialize, shop and watch life go by. Ours would be the ‘town center’ of Innovation. In a Zócalo there are always a number of buildings which provided the themes for the different work spaces in the new innovation center. There is the Government Offices (our leadership room), the clinic (our Oral Care innovators), the market (our Personal Care innovators), houses (our Home Care innovators), a band stand (the Deodorant innovators) as well as a cafe to get our caffeine fixes and informally meet.
Step Six; Bundle Development. The hard part of Innovation, which often doesn’t get the focus it needs and contributes to many new product failures. Converting the big Zócalo idea into a physical reality required creativity, attention to detail and very significant investment of the team’s time. Some highlights of the process which really made the idea come to life were;
Bringing consumers to life. We put life size decals of consumers from all over Latin America on all the walls. Every day they remind the innovators of who they are creating products and advertising for. It became routine to point to the wall and say ‘what would Maria think of that’? Yes, after awhile they all got names.
Engineering collaboration. The layout of the furniture integrated all the different functions together. Importantly every person from the Directors to the Trainees had exactly the same furniture, telephone, etc. This eliminated the dramas of office envy.
Community Involvement. We ran bi-weekly meetings with the entire Innovation community, keeping them up to date and giving ample opportunities for feedback & voicing uncertainties.
Prototyping. Every item was physically seen by the team prior to agreement, from the decals to the furniture to the colours. There were some surprises which if not seen early would have caused headaches down the track
Attention To Detail. The small things can make a big difference. Instead of regular carpet we had custom carpet tiles printed to look like cobblestones. This helped bring the Zócalo concept to life
A Headliner. Every project needs a wow factor. Ours was having the front half of a Volkswagen Kombi restored and installed as a two person phone booth. The universal reaction was “You’ve got a car in your office? I’ve got to see this!”. For context, these Kombis were used as taxis all over Latin America for years
Step Seven; Commercialization & Feedback. One happy Monday we all moved into the new office. Moral surged upwards. Collaboration levels climbed. Requests to work in the Innovation Center rolled in.The new Innovation Center became a ‘must see’ place for visitors from all over the world; the Board of Directors came, the New York Stock Analysts came, and many more. There’s a proud photo album of over 100 people from C-Suite downwards who wanted their photos in the Kombi.
It’s time to act : Innovation drives growth.
