The One With the Clams
Hi all!
One of the exciting initiatives we are working on is our Inclusive Innovation Programme, where we invite colleagues from other parts of the organisation to collaborate with us on innovation projects. This program provides an opportunity for cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing, and helps to foster a culture of innovation within our organisation.
Diversity and inclusivity
Diversity is good for innovation because it brings together individuals with different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. This can lead to more creative and effective problem-solving, as well as a greater variety of ideas and solutions.
My all-time favourite about the merits of diversity is mentioned in this Harvard Business Review post by Greg Satell.
I have not verified the story, and it does sound a little too good to be true, but with that out of the way — here it goes.
It all starts with a tech company winning a large multi-million bid to design a sensor that would measure levels of pollutants in water on a very detailed scale (ppms). The overall goal is to be able to open and close various flood gates depending on how pure/dirty the water is. The firm calls in their top engineers, designers and experts and start brainstorming various microchip designs that would be able to not alone perform such challenging tasks, but to do it reliably and under pretty rough circumstances.
“About 45 minutes into their first working session, the marine biologist assigned to their team walked in with a bag of clams and set them on the table. Seeing the confused looks of the chip designers, he explained that clams can detect pollutants at just a few parts per million, and when that happens, they open their shells.”
The image below shows a solution in Poland that is clearly inspired, albeit if you look closely the design seems slightly flawed.
However; as the story goes the marine biologist saved the company $999 950 and the project team got clams for lunch that day.
For the same reason we don’t really advertise for specific roles to our innovation projects, we are rather looking for people with open minds, curious hearts and diverse backgrounds.
We are looking forward to a most exciting 2023 and expanding the programme to contain a plethora of inspiring innovation projects driven by passionate — and (very!) diverse — teams.
Happy holidays :-)
