THE CHALLENGE…
“We thought we understood innovation,” he says. “We thought we knew how to examine opportunities in the market and assess whether they were worth pursuing. I know now just how wrong we were”
With a history of more than 150 years of operation, Backwell IXL hit a major hurdle when closures to the Australian automotive sector hit and supply chains were broken.
The automotive industry had been the backbone of production for many years and with that off the table, the company were looking at losing the majority of our business. The implications were dire and the jobs of 150 workers at the Geelong site were on the line. They needed to find new ways of working and new revenue streams, quickly.
WHAT WE DID…
G2 Innovation designed a bespoke 12 month innovation capability program for a team of Innovation Ambassadors in the business. Through training and coaching we developed the teams capability in Design Thinking, Strategic Thinking and Future Thinking. We supported them to develop an innovation portfolio of Now, Next and Future market offerings.
To the team we asked ‘What if’ you examine opportunities from a user perspective? What if you explore macro and micro trends to better understand what your industry will be doing in 3, 5, 10 years, so that you are ahead of our competitors? ‘What if’ you look outside of your usual revenue models into retail and other industries? ‘What if’ you accept failure as procedural and start enjoying experimentation?
WHAT WAS ACHIEVED…
As a result of this program, Backwell IXL diversified into retail with new products developed for Harvey Norman, they partnered with an top university in an innovative research project, pushed into distributed manufacturing and after only 12 months their order book moved from dire to blossoming. This program was a Finalist for Best Leadership Development Program at the Australian Institute of Training and Development Awards.
“We are now getting new results from new ways, have a better engaged workforce and a new-found optimism. As a leader of this company, I couldn’t be more impressed.”
