On Tuesday, October 3rd 2017, all desks at the TAFE offices had an interesting object on their desks… a crumpled sheet of bright yellow paper! Most employees wore a puzzled look on their faces and were scratching their heads wondering whether to keep it or trash it. And, of course, almost by default each one of them opened it to find a very interesting message –
“Don’t trash your ideas – Let them land in the right place.”
Excellent organisations recognize that innovation can apply to products, processes, marketing, organizational structures and business models. Over the years, TAFE has strived towards achieving organizational excellence by establishing a culture of continuous improvement and learning. In the last few years, we have been focusing on harnessing creativity and inculcating a culture of innovation across the organisation through a systematic approach to manage innovation driving:
- Product innovation through Small Innovation Group
- Cost saving initiatives through Prospero and Vridhi
- Process excellence through e-CIMP and DiscoverI
Furthering our efforts to harness creativity and innovation, TAFE’s unified platform for idea management – i3 – was launched on September 30, 2017, on the auspicious occasion of Vijaya Dasami, in the presence of TAFE’s Chairman & CEO, Ms. Mallika Srinivasan. The event was attended by several senior management executives and project team members. The event was broadcast through a webinar for outstation participants to attend.
The launch event started with traditional lighting of the lamp followed by a prayer song and the TAFE Anthem. Ms. Shobhana Ravi, Chief Information Technology, Innovation and Learning Officer (CITILO), gave a brief overview of the new platform and its features. Mr. S Jaishankar, Sr. GM (Cost Control) posted the first challenge in the new platform and Mr. Jones Sunder Singh, Sr. AVP (Treasury) posted the first idea in response to the challenge. The launch event was successful and closed with a special keynote by TAFE Chairman & CEO, Ms. Mallika Srinivasan, who addressed the gathering on the importance of innovation, cost saving and how this platform can be leveraged.
i3 – An overview
TAFE’s unified idea management platform will provide an opportunity to get inspired, ideate and implement your ideas and get rewarded through a gamified experience. Key highlights of the unified platform are:
- Ideas and challenges can be posted under the broad categories – Cost Saving, Technology Leadership, Customer Solutions and Process Excellence, each of which will further have sub-categories
- Idea evaluation is done by a 3 member workflow team
- Every idea is evaluated based on a set of defined parameters on impact, uniqueness and feasibility
- Based on evaluation scores, ideas will be classified as Just Do It / Kaizen / Innovative Idea / Breakthrough Idea
The team invites all TAFE employees to login and contribute their ideas, as it could be the next big idea! The real gamechanger.