Guiding
Innovation at P2S
Q & A W I T H P 2 S C E O A N D I N C U B ATO R A D V I S O R Y B O A R D M E M B E R K E V I N P E T E R S O N
Good ideas don’t necessarily have come from the
top down, any employee might have a million-dollar
idea just waiting to be heard. The P2S Incubator is a
means of harvesting this often-untapped company
asset, the best ideas are developed into services and
processes that improve the company and deliver
better services to our clients. President and CEO,
Kevin Peterson sits on the Incubator Advisory Board
where he’s witnessed first-hand how remarkably
successful the P2S Incubator has become. We spoke
to him to get his thoughts on the program, including
the strategic value it brings to P2S.
What is unique about the P2S Incubator?
Kevin Peterson: The Incubator is unique in that it
permits us to incubate R&D type projects by setting
up internal champions to work on those initiatives.
When we began the incubator 8 years ago, we
were one of only a few AEC industry firms with
anything like it. Other firms have started to run
similar programs today, but the incubator gives us
a distinct competitive advantage because we have
a firm-wide platform where any staff member can
develop ideas and hone their entrepreneurship.
The result is more skilled employees and new ideas
that will ultimately improve not only P2S as a
company, but also services for our clients.
Why is it important to operate an internal think-
thank group like the Incubator?
KP: We realized it was going to take more than just
a few people at the firm to nurture new ideas. We
formalized a structure where staff could present
new ideas and enhance their entrepreneurial skills.
We didn’t want to drive this structure from the
top-down, we wanted group members to be able to
nurture ideas that they thought would improve or
expand our client service lines.
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How does the Incubator impact company growth?
KP: It helps us tremendously. As we have
experienced 20% year over year growth for 5 years
in a row now, the incubator does a tremendous job
of assisting us to keep up with that growth. If you
look at some of the initiatives we worked on last
year, standardization and updating of our design
standards, detail libraries and specifications, the
incubator really helped us with our update cycle
and to formalize how we’re getting those updates
organized for a growing population of employees.
It makes us more efficient. It allows us to handle
more work, but also to do our job better. It allows
our engineers more time to evaluate alternatives
and new technologies rather than procedural. We’re
now also doing almost all our projects in Revit and
everything is Revit compatible.
In what ways do clients benefit from the incubator?
KP: Again, the Incubator was set up to develop
internal and external improvements. We try to
foresee services that they client may want - to
anticipate their future needs. It typically takes
us 6-12 months to take an idea to launch. When
we have ideas for clients we’ll go out and talk to
them and interview them to see if the idea is of any
interest to them. That’s one of the measurements
we use on whether we should really pursue
development. In terms of trying to foresee and track
technology changes in our industry its something
that the incubator is also doing and that of course is
beneficial for clients.
How is an incubator idea launched into a new
service or efficiency gain?
KP: Once a year, we have a 60-day period where
we toss around ideas and the best ones rise to the
top. It’s sort of a committee setting where we decide
which ideas we’re going to tackle for the year. It’s