DigiTech Magazine - US CIO2020 - Fall 2015 | Page 25
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An incubator that continuously
works on that next big-break
product or service, not only
increases an organization’s
chances of realising new adjacent
revenue streams, but also
sends a positive message on the
importance of entrepreneurship and creativity to
customers and employees.
This type of investment is different from a ‘Dragons
Den’ or ‘Hackathon’ event in that it requires on-going
investment and support. Companies should consider
whether short-term fixes will truly shift the culture
and thinking of their organization or whether they
should instead make an on going commitment to
launching in-house start-ups. Whatever the level of
investment made, companies that choose to invest in
corporate entrepreneurs are in good company – Coke,
ERP Workday and Barclays are already running well
established internal start-up ecosystems.
Culr - An investment by North
Highland in its people and to create
a new product
Back in July 2014, North Highland’s London office
launched an internal eight-week innovation competition
with more than 300 ideas garnered around the themes
of improving the lives of our people, our clients and our
wider business. At the culmination of the competitive
process and following a pitch to industry experts, the
winning start-up concept emerged – Culr (pronounced
‘Color’), a product to improve the way in which
performance management in the workplace is handled.
What is Culr and what is the
product vision?
Culr is a product which enables employees to provide
feedback to colleagues on a ‘little and often’ basis
in the workplace. The team behind Culr have a
vision to unleash employee potential by increasing
the frequency, quality and accuracy of performance
management feedback.
The Culr team had an obsessive desire to strip back
what was becoming an increasingly document-driven
and paper heavy process, to align better to how people
expect to use digital products in their personal
lives. Culr has a simple intuitive design to allow
users to quickly provide feedback to others, and
review feedback they’ve received, in seconds.
The topic of annual reviews and performance
management has featured highly in the press recently,
with global professional services firms such as
Accenture, with a workforce of 330,000 employees,
ditching the annual performance review in favour of
a more fluid feedback process. This is suggestive of a
much broader trend that the Culr proposition is looking
to address; as companies look to move to a more
‘natural’ feedback process with a focus on continual
personal development rather than pre-defined rankings
at static review periods.
Culr: Developing the proposition
Culr started with a desire to solve a problem, much
like many other start-up. A number of potential
solutions were hypothesized which the team validated
in the UK market place as well as with the start-up
community in Silicon Valley. Competitor analysis,
market insight and customer feedback further
refined and added detail to the proposition, which was
continually fed into its design to ensure Culr would
meet the target market need.
NH London partnered with a development agency and
through a number of collaborative User Experience
designs workshops, the Culr feature backlog was built
out and development kicked off.
With an MVP (minimum viable product) now live, the
exciting part begins as we partner with a number of
clients to trial Culr and collaborate to further improve
the product. During an eight-week beta period, clients
are given full access to both the product and the Culr
team, who will be sharing their experience of getting
a start-up off the ground, their time in Palo Alto and
what it takes to bring an entrepreneurial mindset to
a big corporate.
If you’re interested in hearing more
about Culr and think there may be a
place for it in your organization
please contact Paul Hutchinson:
[email protected]
@addsomeculr
CIO Magazine Fall 2015 Issue
25