Find new solutions for electric products through the development of the creative thinking.
THE CLIENT: EFAPEL
THE CHALLENGE
To accelerate the creation of ideas and problem solving, to maximize the efficiency of product development team.
THE OUTCOME
Implementation of solutions that boosted 9 ongoing projects/products.
The Electric Products Industry is an area deeply linked to technological growth, where investigation, development and innovation are key-factors. EFAPEL, a familiy owned company that started in 1978 in Serpins, close to Coimbra, Portugal, is today the biggest producer of low tension electrical devices and a market leader in Portugal. It exports 30% of its production to more than 50 countries across the World and counts with about 360 employees.
Its high investment in Research and Development (800.000€ in 2016) and in Human Resources (more than 34.000 hours of training in 2017) have been crucial to its success. In 2016 it grew 8% and just in the first semester of 2017 it grew 20%. EFAPEL’s mission illustrates this commitment when it states that the company creates the best solutions by “developing the workers talent, ensuring their motivation and encouraging creativity”. In Américo Duarte’s, CEO, words: “we consider people the most valuable asset” and “we promote access to the acquisition of new skills.”
Good business performance depends both on the quality of newly launched products and also on the improvement of already existent ones. As a consequence, creative thinking and the development of innovative solutions by the Innovation and Product Development Department (IDI) is central in this business. The company grew quickly in the past years due to this already developed ability. However, at the same time it identified the necessity of turning the IDI team even more efficient in creative and structured problem solving connected to new product development.
“We had the possibility of working techniques that helped us think in a different way, “out of the box”, finding methods to explore our creativity.”
JOSÉ MARTINHO, DEPARTMENT DIRECTOR, EFAPEL
EFAPEL challenged Consulting House to design an intervention that transmits know-how and methodologies to secure constant innovative ideas and a structured process to bring them to the market. Our approach to innovation is perfectly in line with the one of EFAPEL and its CEO, who states: “What is simple is brilliant!”.
With this intervention, the intention was to transform the team into an even more capable one. Increase its ability to develop innovative products with market value, to find technical solutions in order reduce costs on existent products, through: “out of the box” thinking; to spot blockers to the creative process; to increase the capacity of dealing with risk and to use creativity techniques and divergent thinking.
In this context and aimed at the whole IDI team, the programme “Leading Innovation and Creativity” emerged. The programme consisted of 3 different phases: In the first phase, the diagnosis phase, participants filled in our online questionnaire Team Creativity Profile, followed by individual interviews to fill in information gaps for the design and adjustment of the intervention to EFAPEL’s reality. On that basis, the second phase was created- a workshop aimed at developing competencies on creativity, innovation and problem solving through the practical training of techniques and methodologies. The participants created an “Innovation Lab”, in which they were asked to solve problems of their own reality, identifying creative solutions always with the support of a Consulting House facilitator.
Finally, the third phase was applying the techniques and solutions to their ongoing projects. At this stage another workshop was held to support and monitor the implmentation and to strengthen the acquired competencies.
The end results of the “Leading Innovation and Creativity” intervention were positive. According to the established goals, obstacles were overcome in 9 ongoing projects/products. Participants considered that the experience ”opened new possibilites for approaching problems” and “already noticed a positive change in the team”.
Apart from unlocking obstacles, the ideas that resulted from the programme triggered also the possibility of starting new, innovative and important projects to EFAPEL’s business.
In the words of José Martinho (Department Director of EFAPEL), the “Leading Innovation and Creativity” project was ”without doubt an added value. We had the possibility of working techniques that helped us think in a different way, “out of the box”, finding methods to explore our creativity. It helped us to differentiate creativity from innovation, highlighting creativity as a way to innovation, which is essential to a product development team”.
