The Challenge

“How can we delight our consumers even more?”

Heineken is no stranger to the concept of Idea Challenges. Both the creativity from Heineken's strategic partners as well as their own employees is famous worldwide. This time however, Heineken wanted an even broader idea generation scope, faster idea implementation and in general a larger amount of ideas. In short; they wanted to speed up innovation.We are proud to say they chose IdeaNet™ and our Challenge Management© approach to do the job.

The Challenge

“We are looking for new ideas on how such super fast connection speeds could be used by customers. [...] Unlock your creativity, use your imagination and let us know!”

UPC recently developed the ‘UPC Fiber Power’, a product providing incredible internet download speeds of up to 120 Mbps. The introduction in the Netherlands had to be followed by introductions in all other UPC countries. UPC management approached Innovation Factory with the request for a way to involve the employees throughout Europe in celebrating this important milestone. Innovation Factory proposed to host an Idea Challenge.

Achmea is a top 3 Dutch insurer. It grew by acquiring diverse Dutch labels and is proceeding with this strategy in Europe. A result of such a strategy is a large number of divisions, operating companies, brands, and staff departments that are all used to operate autonomously.

One of the wishes of the board was to get people to connect more between these entities and to share knowledge.

Innovation Factory was asked by Achmea Innovation Center of Excellence to facilitate this process.

Creative City Lab stands for a world of innovative and sustainable solutions and collaboration. The Creative City Lab foundation is a joint initiative of forces from the corporate world, government, knowledge institutions and the creative industry. The goal is to realise societal and economical developments in a sustainable manner, through collaboration with all parties involved. Creative and sustainable solutions for urgent and complex issues are being developed and realised in this unique, open and innovative initiative. Over a period of half a year, 25 carefully selected top students will work together in multidisciplinary teams on their assignment. These students are guided by innovative parties from business and the creative industry. During the project, collaboration between the business world and the creative industry is essential.