Really happy to share that Conteneo has added me to their Advisory Board!
Conteneo is a Silicon Valley Startup offering multidimensional collaboration solutions for the public and private sector.
What excites me about Conteneo’s solutions is how they are using play elements in their collaboration products to help you deeply engage everyone in an organization. Actually, you can easily engage your whole ecosystem.
Transforming Transamerica towards a Culture of Innovation
The insurance industry doesn’t strike one as an early adopter of innovations, yet a department at Transamerica saw the writing on the wall a couple of years ago: they have to innovate and radically improve their own offerings if they don’t want to be disrupted by a more innovative company.
Isn’t that true for all enterprises? In this time of accelerating change, the most adaptive a.k.a innovative companies will thrive.
What needed to happen was a change in Transamerica’s corporate culture where everyone in the organization was empowered to be innovative and knowledgeable about how to bring an idea to be acted on. Conteneo’s Innovation Games helped Transamerica to transform their culture; they went from from zero Innovation Games played to about 70% having played Innovation Games in one year.
Aaron Proietti, who was Transamerica’s Chief Innovation Officer and is now the Chief Customer Advocate, has been the leader of that amazing transformation. Here he humbly tells the story:
Also worth checking out Conteneo’s Transamerica webinar where Transamerica’s Director of Innovation, Teresa (Terry) Matheny, and Innovation Manager, Amanda Seelman, discuss how online and in-person Innovation Games® are a key part of helping them build and sustain a culture of innovation. Two takeaways:
- Online Innovation Games brought out the quiet ones who, in a regular session, wouldn’t speak up.
- Innovation Games took on a life of its own: We only trained a couple of people, but found out that quickly other departments even in other regions were starting to collaborate using these tools.
Speedboat Innovation Game Example
I quickly recorded an Innovation Game example that you can create. Just sign up for a Conteneo Account too.
In this example I am creating a speedboat forum. Participants can share their views by planting anchors, representing detractors and propellors representing accelerators on the picture. That really helps focusing the conversation.
Everyone has the chance to put their insights and concerns on the picture und discuss these in a transparent way. It leads to a much greater consensus and buy-in from everyone involved around the final decision.
City of San José Participatory Budgeting
Conteneo is also providing the system and framework for the San José Participatory Budgeting program.
For the 5th year running, the city of San José is inviting their citizens to help them allocate their budget. An estimated 1,000 citizens will take part on February 20, 2016 at in-person participatory budgeting sessions and tens of thousands of participants will share their insights that week online. The police helicopter has been mothballed is a budgetary saving derived from previous years’ sessions’ results.
I just love that Conteneo’s solutions enable the deeper engagement of San Jose’s residents with city affairs. They get transparency and greater ownership of what is going on where they live. The technology is ready, the benefits are proven, why not implement it in your city?
Conteneo’s CollabConfab Conference February 18th/19th in San Jose
Interested in this kind of deep engagement? Join me at the CollabConfab conference on February 18th/19th in Mountain View. There is a great lineup of speakers, including Sam Liccardo, the mayor of San José.
One privilege of me having connections with Conteneo is that you can get discounted tickets to the fabulous conference. Use discount code: finnern or this link to get $100 off your ticket. See you there!