When employees change cerebral hemispheres
Innovation Driver is the name of TrygVesta’s new in-house training programme, which aims, among other things, to develop employees’ ability to think along new lines. Monica Rydland Anundsen was one of the first employees to take part in the programme. An experience that has raised activity levels in the creative side of her brain.
Monica Rydland Anundsen works with strategic development of Corporate at the divisional management group in Norway. Today, for the very first time she will be taking part in the new Innovation Driver programme at TrygVesta’s BusinessLab in Ballerup, Denmark.
Monica Rydland Anundsen imagines that she will be presented with a tightly structured programme. That she will be given some methodical tools and instructions on how and when to use them.
Monica Rydland Anundsen can think again.
In Ballerup, she’s welcomed to a meeting room that is nothing like the meeting rooms she normally sees at work. The ceiling has disco lighting. Soft warm colours add to the atmosphere created by the tea lights on the small round coffee tables. The walls are not straight, but curved in round, female forms. Like a surrealistic picture. There are no windows. She is underground. The music is emotive. Romantic.
Welcome to TrygVesta’s BusinessLab. Welcome to the new Innovation Driver training programme. Welcome to a new way to think and work.
From the logical to the creative side of the brain
At BusinessLab in Ballerup, the music and lighting system menu offers a choice of different moods:
Growth and new beginnings
Fear anxiety insecurity
Poetry romance love
The menu has more than 10 different core moods. Choose Poetry romance love, and the lighting and music become poetic and romantic – not exactly the traditional mood in a business lab:
"I’d expected some more structured methods and tools, but with hindsight, I can see that innovation requires something else. If you want new ideas, you have to be jogged out of your traditional setting, methods and processes. The programme has developed my mindset in terms of how ideas are developed, managed and realised," explains Monica Rydland Anundsen.
New mindset and world view
It’s all about simultaneously acknowledging what factors make the organisation a success and what factors prevent the organisation moving ahead. According to the head of the new programme, the answers to the two questions are often the same. What creates success can also create difficulties. We must therefore think along new lines. Malene Bendtsen is a coach for the Innovation Driver programme:
"The idea is to come up with something that none of us has thought of before and that we can only think together. The course participants are trained in making new discoveries. And coming up with new ideas is very difficult if you are anchored in an "old" mindset. That’s why we put Monica and the
other participants in a completely new setting. We challenge traditional knowledge. We present something that doesn’t match the organisation’s world view. We develop employees’ horizons by encouraging them to take a lateral perspective, explore peripheral opportunities. "
As the participants begin to relax and use their creative grey matter, they begin to notice the opportunities provided by unconventional work processes. So, the programme also includes a form of personal development:
"For me, development, increased interaction, and security are what drive my work. Both in relation to teamwork with my colleagues and the products we can develop for our customers. The Innovation Driver programme proved to be right for me. This new way of working gives me more strings to by bow," explains Monica Rydland Anundsen.
Pushing the envelope
Working with statistics, focus groups and risk assessments is one thing. Working with emotions and your imagination is quite another:
"We tell employees to trust their intuition. They join the project without knowing what they’ll get out of it. That takes courage. Employees may not appreciate the link between what they’re doing today and what it will lead to in three months’ time. Accepting insecurity is a challenge. It pushes the envelope," explains Malene Bendtsen.
Business development through theatre
The coaches on the Innovation Driver programme have backgrounds in economics, philosophy, theology, information sciences, datalogy, management and design. But first and foremost they are experienced in and understand learning processes. They use experiences from the world of performing arts:
"In the world of business, we’re used to devising plans first and then realising them. But if you’ve sealed the envelope before you start, then you can’t push yourselves outside these limits. Dramaturges and performers are good at thinking and creating at the same time. Our own dramaturge on the programme involves the body’s way of thinking by building insurance products out of cardboard, for example. Is the new insurance product blue or red, triangular or square? Considerations like these lead to more than just spreadsheets and wordy documents. A cardboard insurance product is a tangible prototype. We transform ideas into words and make them tangible. This is what theatrical and artistic processes can do," explains Malene Bendtsen, who has a background in economy, marketing, innovation management and adult education theory.
Two and a half months of cerebral gymnastics
The programme for the first team of course participants took two and a half months. After the programme is completed, the "Drivers" allocate time for solving tasks that take the equivalent of two days every six weeks. Altogether they spend seven days in the BusinessLab.
After challenging their creative hemisphere, the Drivers are ready to take to the driving seat and steer the Group’s product development.
Responsibility and innovation
TrygVesta in a Nordic collaboration on CSR driven innovation
Klausdalsbrovej 601DK-2750 BallerupTelephone: +45 7011 2020Fax: +45 4420 6700E-mail: ir@trygvesta.com