Creating Innovating Start Up

1) A global benefits software firm created an internal startup called "Megathrust" to encourage innovation among employees. 2) At a company learning conference, employees were divided into teams and asked to brainstorm new ideas without hierarchy or rules. 3) Empowering employees in this way produced novel ideas, such as reducing meetings and using instant messaging more. The company aims to repeat the internal startup event annually to further promote innovation.

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Creating Innovating Start Up

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Creating a start-up within your business | ILM - Insight

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Creating a start-up within your business

Pete Craghill
Tue Dec 22, 2015 4:06 PM

Pete Craghill, CTO of Thomsons

Online Benefits, describes how the
global benefits software firm is
innovating like a start-up and why
innovation should come from within
Technology and business models are evolving
at an increasingly rapid rate and organisations
need to innovate rapidly or risk being eaten
by the next digital disruptor. Barely known five
years ago, were now becoming familiar with
the trend acqui-hiring - whereby a company
acquires another for its talent over products or
services. While this presents a viable business
strategy for technology giants, other
companies have to take a different creative
approach to innovation and talent
development. Here, Pete Craghill, CTO of
Thomsons Online Benefits
(https://www.thomsons.com/), describes how the global benefits software firm is innovating like a start-up to revolutionise
the way it brings tech to the market.

Embracing the innovation challenge

As a company were always striving to better ourselves, our technology and the experience we provide our clients, but we
were a little cautious about driving forward certain projects because of our focus and pride on delivery of our core software
platform, Darwin.
To challenge this mind-set we needed to create a situation that gave them total freedom; one with no code of business, no
hierarchy and no rules. We needed a creative sandbox a safe environment where people werent afraid to share their ideas
in and have them knocked down.
We were holding our learning and development conference in Cluj (a fast-growing tech hub in Romania) and decided to take
advantage of having the whole senior tech team across the various disciplines in one place and outside of their usual work
environment. In total, 45 of our senior developers, quality engineers and business analysts from our offices in Singapore,
Romania and London were present. This geographic split was essential, as each region brought its own development
perspective, meaning that together they provided a comprehensive representation of the global market.

Creating a Start-Up within an Established Business

Once we were in situ, we set about developing our fictional business, starting with its name. We didnt want anything too
serious, and actually started off brainstorming names with TV show, The Apprentice, in mind. Eventually we settled on
Megathrust something deliberately preposterous that underlined the whole point of the initiative that no idea was too
stupid.
In line with this, we invented a fictional CEO, River Bends, who was over the top and injected a lot of fun in to proceedings.
Enthusiasm went up in response to him and the character reinforced the point that this was a creative process rather than an
engineering one.
After an introduction by River, attendees were put into teams for the day. Rather than provide them with a leadership
structure, we asked them to consider how they were going to work and what team structure theyd like to use. We wanted to
instil the idea of zero management so that people understood this wasnt about addressing a specific application challenge
but more about developing a way of working together whereby we could meet and overcome multiple challenges. It was
interesting to see that some teams did end up implementing traditional hierarchical structures. These were the process driven
people, for whom creativity is more of a challenge. However, others thrived on the lack of an organisational pyramid.
During the day, teams were asked to brainstorm different ways of working and eliminating unnecessary process from the
organisation. At the end of the day they presented their ideas on structures and techniques, which were then implemented at
our Innovation Week the following week.

Empowering Employees
We found that completely empowering people produced some great ideas. Some teams decided to eliminate meetings for
example, and instead purely use Skype and instant messenger. While they found some meetings were necessary, their
number has been dramatically reduced particularly in the technology team.
People became more experimental. We really wanted people to push boundaries so hard that we had to rein them back.
Although Im not sure we quite reached this creative Nirvana, we definitely progressed and continue to progress now. The
problem were up against is that any technical team is educated to know their limitations - but were really noticing erosion of
this attitude and less trepidation at the prospect of trying something new.
We realised the need to involve the entire team in innovation; its not the reserve of seniors in the organisation. A lot of great
ideas come from junior people, which stands to reason as theyre newer to the organisation and dont have that, the way its
done round here mentality.

https://www.i-l-m.com/Insight/Inspire/2015/December/innovation-in-start-ups

12/10/2016

Creating a start-up within your business | ILM - Insight

Page 2 of 2

Perhaps the biggest endorsement of the Megathrust concept is that we intend to repeat it next year, making it bigger and
better. We want to make it a week-long event in line with our company conference to encourage the whole company to really
immerse itself in creativity and emphasise the importance of this across the organisation.

Making Revolutions a Daily Occurrence

While weve demonstrated just how effective dedicated innovation events can be, behaviour adoption depends on frequent
repetition meaning that making this a reoccurring event would increase its effectiveness. This is why weve made revolution
a theme in the company and implemented a number of schemes to encourage this on a day-to-day basis. We have our ideas
lab for example, an online forum where people can post ideas about better ways of working and be rewarded for their wider
implementation. Were also looking at how internal social networks can be used to collate knowledge contained on the
organisation so that it can be easily searched and accessed. Its the little things like this - besides the big showpieces that
are going to keep us at the forefront of our industry - being the revolution.
Pete Craghill is the CTO of Thomsons Online Benefits (https://www.thomsons.com/) a global leader in employee
benefits software. Hes built his technology team from 3 to almost 150 staff in just a few years and enjoys developing and
motivating his teams, experimenting in new technologies and specialising in agile development.

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