Marcel is a Manager R&D Solid Milling at SECO tools and is part of the group that manages innovation within the company. They are just starting out on their innovation journey and wanted to see best practice to learn from as they gear up to invest into innovation. Innovation Excellence Masterclass has reaffirmed Marcel that his current planning process was correct and guided him towards the next steps necessary to successfully innovate at SECO. His biggest takeaway was finding out how to free up people for innovation within the company.

My Challenges: We are currently setting up an innovation function in our company. We don’t have a process for innovation in place yet nor resources assigned. We looked at several events to get some input on how to get started and this Masterclass fitted really well. I work in a quite conservative industry and it will take time for companies to become truly innovative. We recognise that our time is now.

How Gemba Helped: Having a diverse group of companies at the Masterclass, all at different levels and scales, was a useful way of getting an understanding of different innovation paths one can take. The steps that we have taken so far have been confirmed at the Masterclass, which reassured me that we are on the right track. We have taken it slower than company has expected us to in terms of implementing innovation but I’m glad to see that I was right in thinking that innovation is something you need to embed and happy to see it was worth it. I was also able to get an understanding of what are the next steps we need to take to ensure our innovation efforts are successful. We assigned an innovation function in the company, one of the VPs, and a small team attached to him. But we have been asking how to free up people for innovation for the last 2 years and the Masterclass has given me the answer. We now have a better understanding as a company what innovation entails, both as a concept and process.