How “Team COCO” Leveraged Ideas-to-Action to Improve Customer Co-Design and Accelerate Best Practice Adoption
Customer co-design is a powerful tool for product development. But getting it right and achieving a strong ROI can be challenging. This was the dilemma facing a global organization with over a hundred new product teams operating on three continents. They needed to accelerate the adoption of proven customer co-design best practices across their locations.
Making a Leap of Faith about the Power of Frontline Wisdom
Amy, a headquarters R&D leader for a Fortune 500 consumer goods company was tapped to lead the effort to improve co-design success. She was initially hesitant about relying on a team of colleagues from across the global organization to find solutions. “I’m very accustomed to using video conferencing tools with my team, but I didn’t see how we could get the collaboration we needed for this type of change by operating online, particularly across time zones and global locations.”
However, after experiencing the Ideas-to-Action Team Platform in a simulation, she was confident about moving ahead: “We needed ideas from all of our product development teams across the organization to build ownership for adopting proven customer co-design methods. Ideas-to-Action was an easy and effective way to not just solicit ideas but prioritize and put them into action leveraging expertise in team members from across the globe.
Team COCO Takes Action with Ideas-to-Action
Team COCO, as the team named themselves, launched their project using the Ideas-to-Action Team Platform. Leveraging the platform’s brainstorming and prioritization tools, they generated over 40 ideas for boosting customer co-design. They then narrowed their focus to five key actions:
- Conduct a survey to assess co-design awareness, methods, and barriers.
- Document co-design processes and options.
- Update the toolkit for planning and facilitating co-design projects.
- Gather and organize a database of co-design case studies.
- Develop a global roll-out plan to incentivize usage and measure results.
Meeting weekly, supported by the Ideas-to-Action Team Platform, the team quickly converted their ideas into work products and action plans. Just six weeks later, they presented their accomplishments and recommendations to senior leaders, earning enthusiastic support and a budget increase to fund additional co-design projects.
The Ideas-to-Action Difference: Collaboration, Prioritization, and Action
Reflecting on their experience, team members appreciated how the Ideas-to-Action Team Platform streamlined their change initiative, fostered collaboration, and enhanced leadership development. As one team member commented, “We all had valuable insights, but Ideas-to-Action made it easy to collaborate, prioritize, and drive action. It accelerated our success and was a rewarding professional development experience.”
Ready to unlock the power of employee ideas across dispersed locations. Preorder your copy of Ideas to Action: Unlock Your Organization’s Hidden Genius for Igniting Innovation and Accelerating Results and explore our Ideas-to-Action solutions.
