Over June and July, Comunet held our all-of-company innovation event ‘One Team Challenge’ for the second year running. The event brings focus to are ability to innovate, with staff put in multi-disciplined teams to find ‘Problems Worth Solving’ within industry and explore ideas and opportunities for new products and services.
One Team Challenge gets staff focussed on examining the costs of business problems to identify those that (if solved) would bring about the greatest improvement and inherent value to a target customer. With problems qualified, Teams then ideate to find modern solutions with sound business opportunities that have these improvements realised.
Testament to the breadth of skills and talents of staff, and the deep knowledge of the industries we support daily, this year’s event produced some exceptional ‘Problems Worth Solving’ and accompanying solutions.
As example of some the meaningful problems Teams presented include;
- Assisting traffic management businesses manage signage and navigating varying council regulations between projects
- Supporting better objectivity in hiring practices that focus on best candidate for the job
- Assisting Agri business’ with harvest practices that would improve optimum yield
- Empowering power users deliver secure, best practice systems when working in cloud
- Keeping office workers healthy with safe working environments
- Reducing injury from workplace safety incidents with greater adoption of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
On presentation day, we were extremely lucky to present team pitches an accomplished judging panel from both public and private sector executive backgrounds.
This year's winner 'Team Frogger' took out top place with their business plan 'AgriSavvy'.
While the event encourages a winning team, all the projects in this year’s event were award worthy. Over the next month we will continue to qualify the projects for business investment with the hope to see some of these projects assisting clients in the future.
While new business opportunity is certainly a goal of One Team Challenge, by far the most beneficial outcomes are the personal career building skills an event like this provides. Stepping away from traditional silos and job roles, the event demonstrates every staff member has a capability and contribution far greater than their job position.
The other key reminder of OTC is that the best ideas are founded in collaboration and having strong intercommunication between colleagues is essential in this.