Involving Employees in Innovation of Processes and Products

The Benefits of Involving Employees in Innovation

The nationwide study of employee-driven innovation (LO 2006) shows that  companies that are capable of combining product development with the involvement of their employees have a number of growth-promoting and competitive advantages.

The creation of an attractive workplace for skilled labour, an increase in job satisfaction and the
reduction of sickness absence and negative stress are some of the main benefits that appear from
both studies. In turn, they lead to a further improvement of bottomline results and an enhancement of
competitiveness. Improved bottom-line results and competitiveness.


Both the nationwide study (LO 2006) and the current case analysis of Saint-Gobain, Isover and DSB
demonstrate that employee-driven innovation has a positive impact on a company’s total profit performance. The involvement of both skilled and unskilled workers encourages and supports the
development of new products and processes in international companies as well as in local ones: “The
involvement of the employees is indispensable in a globalized organization. They possess a wealth of information that company cannot afford not to take advantage of.”  58 per cent of the managers in workplaces where unskilled and skilled workers were involved in the innovation process
considered that their financial performance and bottom-line results had improved as a result of their
approach to innovation. This conclusion is well supported by the case analyses.

Increased job satisfaction – an attractive workplace The fact that employee-driven innovation produces satisfied employees is also one of the results to emerge from the nationwide study. Evidently, companies that actively involve their employees in product and process innovation
report higher employee satisfaction.
http://www.lo.dk/english%20version/~/media/Publikationer/Publikations%20filer/English/3213emplyeedriveninnovation2008pdf.ashx

Employee Involvement in Innovation in Infosys - 2014

28 November 2014
Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka engaged with over 160,000 employees and shortlisted 10 ideas through a crowdsourcing exercise, murmuration.

Sikka first connected with over 160,000 engineers on July 15, asking them to share with him the key areas of innovation that they believed the clients were focusing on. From the initial 2,700 ideas by employees, the company came up with a longlist of about 70 solutions, before finally narrowing down to 10 such ideas which it believed could be backed.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-11-28/news/56540693_1_infosys-ceo-vishal-sikka-hcl-technologies-next-big-idea


 16 July 2014
Infosys has sent a video message from the CEO-designate, and a letter signed by COO U B Pravin Rao, to all 1.6 lakh employees, urging them to participate in an initiative, called Murmuration, to crowdsource ideas from them in significant areas of operation.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Act-One-Vishal-Sikka-seeks-ideas-from-Infoscions/articleshow/38445596.cms

11 Sep 2014


Chief Executive Vishal Sikka has shortlisted 68 ideas from his crowdsourcing initiative, Murmuration, at Infosys that saw more than 2,600 proposals.Each idea was evaluated based on set criteria - Desirability (for clients), Feasibility (for the company), Potential (for growth in the market), Clarity (of thought and articulation) and Viability (with regard to Infosys offerings).
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-09-11/news/53811501_1_murmuration-ideas-chief-executive-vishal-sikka

Employee Involvement in Innovation in Cognizant

Cognizant involves employees in innovation efforts and has brought 15 such products to the market by 2014 according to  Gordon Coburn, president,  Cloud360, a Cognizant Business Cloud product , is a product offering which came from employees' innovative ideas.

Cognizant gives seed funding also like venture capitalists to team of employees to develop the products. The firm has close to 200,000 employees.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-11-28/news/56540693_1_infosys-ceo-vishal-sikka-hcl-technologies-next-big-idea

Employee Innovation at HCL

In 2011-12, HCL awarded My-Cloud solution as the winner of its annual employee innovation idea contest. MyCloud, which helps in cloud management, is now used by over 120 customers, making it HCL's "most successful employee-led proposition".