#CoCreate2Accelerate: writing a new playbook for the modern workspace

According to Nevo Hadas, a partner at &Innovation Consulting, “We provide experienced personnel and proven methodologies to move from concept to market launch.” Although they utilise a variety of strategic models, innovation techniques, and facilitation approaches, they remain aware that there are no rules for doing something new, other than keeping an open mind.

Their clients span the globe, but it is their experience in Africa that has enabled them to deliver strategies and results that are based on market realities and local market knowledge.

Their work often takes developed world products and interprets them for developing world economies and vice versa. Says Hadas, “These markets provide large growth opportunities for international businesses but often require a business model tweak to be effective. Sometimes it is something that can be incorporated from other markets, like cash on delivery for e-commerce, and sometimes it is a different mindset all together, like prepaid mobile usage. Understanding what can be done and how to do it can mean the difference between a $10Million market opportunity and a $10 Billion market opportunity.”

Image Source: &Innovation

The challenge

The landscape of work is shifting towards smaller, scalable teams with individuals in global locations, therefore, the way projects are managed needs to be re-imagined. The internal culture, when it comes to using new tools, is weak, with reporting to management often being problematic. Furthermore, the cultural impact of new ways of working are not well define and can create friction and low uptake.

With #CoCreate2Accelarate, &Innovation aims to achieve the following:

• To create a playbook for an integrated extranet technology and culture stack
• Off the shelf, SaaS tools
• Configuration advice
• Cultural rules
• Implementation guide
• To deploy the technology stack
• To publish the playbook in both English and Dutch

On being asked how this new way of working and the playbook will influence the internal culture, Hadas explained: “We do a number of things differently because of the multi-national nature of our work, and the mix of specialisations we employ on different deliverables in a single project. We are putting structure across a variety of disciplines (product, marketing, business processes, finance, support, etc.) all at once, and each have unique ways of operating to achieve success - which you don’t want to damage through a "unified" methodology. While we are an edge case, many businesses are moving into more distributed models with suppliers playing integral roles in their business. We believe that the future of work will resemble our world more than the "9-5, meetings in HQ, project reports on my desk by Monday morning" paradigm.”

Helping &Innovation execute

Their Dutch counterpart, Kevin Weijers is an exploration officer, public speaker and author/blogger. He initiated “We Quit Mail” which helps companies collaborate in a smarter, more valuable, more enjoyable way. Weijers gave up mail in 2013, travelled the world and helped businesses simplify and execute plans to create a better work experience.

&Innovate and Weijers will co-create a Future Workspace Manual, detailing how corporates can use online work tools to bring simplicity, creativity and innovation to the workspace.