SP ENERGY NETWORKS CLIENT STORY

How do you empower 3,000 employees to innovate?

I would not hesitate to recommend the team. The support they provided with our culture change programme was invaluable, balancing creativity, agility and thinking differently with a methodical approach.

COLIN TAYLOR

Director of Engineering, SP Energy Networks

THE CHALLENGE

How do you keep the lights on for 5.2m customers?

Inputs from renewables, shifting consumer behaviour and even consumer generated supply put new strains on energy infrastructure. The need for radical innovation has never been more critical. But in a business where safety and risk aversion is a cultural given, how do you foster experimentation and innovation?

THE APPROACH

Re-imagining innovation at scale

We used Opportunity Index, CoDesign Events and Service Experiments to find, design and test practical solutions to enable employees at any level to take part in innovation.

THE PROCESS

Employee-designed culture change

Board-level interviews to align on the vision for innovation within the business
Engaged employees across the business through surveys and focus groups to identify common barriers
Helped the business look externally for inspiration, connecting them to leaders from Barclays Eagles, GCHQ's startup accelerator, Cisco's Global Talent Head and Liberty Global's employee innovation programme
Engaged key stakeholders from their supply chain to identify innovation priorities from the supplier point of view
Delivered a 4-day Strategy Sprint to help a cross-functional team design 4 new services to enable innovation Prototyped new services and tested them with employees to inform a change management roadmap
New services included an open innovation platform, manager enablement, change champion network and innovation comms strategy