The fourth edition of the Fluidra Innovation Week has concluded with great success. Fluidra, a global leader in the pool industry, has a long-standing experience in developing innovative products and services in the global residential and commercial pool market.
They are commited to encouraging the intrapreneurship attitude amongst their employees, offering the chance to develop innovative solutions for the challenges.
With this goal in mind, Imagine designed a program to select and accelerate the top 5 ideas and showcase them on a DemoDay in front of the top Fluidra’s directives. However, this year it was difficult to select only one winner.
This fourth edition took a spin compared to the previous years with three main updates.
- First, the program was executed entirely online, where Fluidra’s employees from all over the world could join easily and develop their ideas with the aim to become the winner of the #FIW2020.
- Second, the program added an Ideation Competition called the Dream Big, that took place prior to the Innovation Week. Ian initiative that took place within a 3 hour competition of disruptive innovation, generating hundreds of solutions to address the challenges that the business face.
- Last, an investment on the winning project with an acceleration program for 2021, in order to make the winning ideas a reality!
Every year Fluidra chooses a specific theme to frame the FIW. This year the challenge was “How to make Fluidra a more sustainable company”, contributing to the urgent need our planet has.
The program underlies the four phases of the Lombard Method: the disruptive learning process developed by Imagine, based on the Design Thinking and Design Doing methodologies. The first two phases, Inspiration and Ideation, took place during the competition. The last two, prototyping and communication, were developed during the FIW.
It all began with the online Dream Big Competition and a rather important task: to create a team of three. It is very important to join a cohesive and multidisiplinary team when working in challenging projects.
In addition, to make the competition accessible to all employees worldwide, we held two sessions in different time zones: October 6th in the afternoon (CET) and October 7th in the morning (CET).
The competition was a complete success! There were more than a hundred participants, from 9 different countries who turned in 25 great sustainable ideas. The five winning projects who advanced onto the Fluidra Innovation Week program were:
- Sustain Abilities (Spain)
- Cosmo Pools (United States)
- S4S (France)
- Innovac (Australia)
- DreamaPool (Spain + Belgium)
And then The FIW arrived! Due to the internationality of our teams, Imagine also offered parallel morning and afternoon sessions, based on the locations of the teams. The 15 participants connected everyday during three hours, combining a variety of masterclasses, feedback sessions with experts in the pool industry or innovation and teamwork with their personal designer.
On Monday, November 2nd, after David Tapias (EMEA R&D Director) gave a warm welcome, the teams jumped right away onto the Prototyping phase: . Prototyping serves to validate if an idea will succeed or not. Specifically, if the project is desirable, viable and feasible.
Blai Carandell, Founder and CEO of Noba Ventures, gave a Masterclass focusing on the different strategies in order to analise the desirability and viability of the projects. Afterwards, with Blai’s insights, the teams worked on separate online rooms, also meeting for the first time with their personal designer.
Blai Carandell, morning session Masterclass.
On the second day, Ignasi Plaza, Founder and CEO of Protofy, lead the Masterclass with his great expertise in developing successful prototypes when the time constraint is high. In the FIW, the participants have a first hand experience about how to develop a MVP with a short amount of time. This, is a crucial skill that entrepreneurs must master.
Ignasi Plaza, morning session Masterclass.
Tuesday ended with an excelent feedback session. The teams pitched their ideas to an exclusive pool of mentors, learning from their suggestions and insights. The mentors were: David Tapias (EMEA R&D Director), Felix Ortiz (EMEA Customer Experience Manager), Juanjo Gómez (Category Manager Comercial Pool), Benjamin Stevens (IOT EMEA Director), Josep Tura (Innovation Project Manager), Luis Boada (Communication and Business Development), Marc Bonavia (CEO Catalonia Exponential), Blai Carandell (CEO of Noba Ventures) and Ignasi Plaza (CEO of Protofy).
During the last two days of the FIW, the teams entered the fourth phase: communication. As the teams continued developing their prototypes, Emma Rodero, Director of the Media Psychology Lab at UPF, gave a Masterclass about Communication and Pitching skills as well as coached them to better engage with the audience, specifically when it is online. Every year, the FIW culminates with a DemoDay, where the teams showcase their projects and Fluidra’s jury announces the winner. After Emma’s dedicated and personalized training, the teams were on the right path to pitch their ideas on the DemoDay!
Emma Rodero’s coaching in the afternoon session.
The DemoDay, on November 9th, was celebrated through an online webinar where colleagues and employees from all over the world witnessed the results of their peers’ work. Every year, Fluidra’s top directives attend to the DemoDay, taking the role of Jury members to choose the winning project.
The Jury board of 2020 was:
The five teams excelently pitch their ideas, highlighting the NSW Team (Australia), who pitch at their 2:45 in the morning!!
The teams developed such great ideas that the Jury finally decided to award not one, but two! They are:
- The FIF Team with the project S4S, a more affordable pool cover that warms up the water.
- The P Project Team with the project Sustain Abilities, presenting a gamification app to help raise awareness for their employees and engage them to take action.
To conclude, we want to thank the over a hundred participants of the Dream Big, the experts and mentors, the designers, the jury members and the amazing staff from Fluidra, for making this experience possible! The world is changing rapidly and this initiative is a great motivator to include the employees in building the future of the company