DigiTech Magazine - US CIO2020 - Fall 2015 | Page 25

................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 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