The recently launched Innovation Program is a step towards putting a stronger focus on thinking outside the box. We’ve had this concept on the back-burner for a little while, and been trying to make sense of how everything should work. We launched this in a staff meeting a month or so ago, and it’s something we really wanted to tell the wider VJ audience about, since we’re all pretty excited.

So what is it?

Everyone in this business is constantly coming up with ideas for clients, themselves and everyone around them, and we figured there has to be a clever way to capture some of this creativity. This is the first step in doing just that. We’ve essentially just given everyone an outlet for those ideas they thought VJ should have done, but didn’t do. It just starts with an idea, which can be shaped into something tangible within a reasonable time frame.

Defining what ‘an idea’ really means for this program simply came down to anything that can improve our internal process, benefit our clients or offer interesting outcomes. It might revolve around how we can be as efficient as possible in meetings, creating a prototype high-tech solution someone thought would fit with one of our clients and so on. Simply put, if it’ll help us in any way, it’s a good idea.

As far as responses go, we’re pretty stoked. We’ve had a bunch of really fascinating suggestions from all possible different disciplines at VJ.

To try and make sense of it all, and help form, shape and evolve the suggestions we’ve formed an internal Innovation Team which will spend time trying to realize all the ideas. Once the team has fleshed out the idea, it will be pitched in to the business and the decision as to whether we’ll fund the idea into a working prototype will be decided. The idea will then become an internal project with its own budget and the outcomes will be presented to the whole team during our staff meetings.

Overall, it’s a great opportunity for everyone at VJ to get help and funding to realize something they think would be useful for us as a business.

Got any ideas? Tell us about it!