Board of Innovation - Latest Comments

Re: The tools & templates used in a 3 day ideation brainstorm. (Part 1)

Simone Gallio — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 06:04:56 -0000

Can't wait for day 2!

Re: 10 Essential Tips to Nail Your Next Hackathon

Lynn Bromley — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 17:01:43 -0000

Like your approach and so appreciate your generosity in openly sharing this info - but.....I'd like to push back at you a bit with your use of Alpha Male. It suggests that a woman could not lead this sort of activity. I'm certain that was not your intent.

Re: This is how launching on Product Hunt for the first time, hammered our expectations.

Mitchell Lee — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 14:01:24 -0000

We had a pretty similar experience: PH sent a lot of traffic our way, but we had to overcome some setbacks before we finally made it to the front page.

http://blog.mitchjlee.com/l...

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Simon De Ruyter — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 06:11:48 -0000

Hi Eric,

First of all, thank you for your comment! Indeed, looking at the gender flow of our different recruitment phases was an interesting exercise to do. It showed me that there is definitely room for improvement at the first step - in boosting the amount of female innovators applying for the job. If I look at the industry demographics, we are not doing bad. However, if I look at the gender ratio of the amount of graduates in innovation in Belgium (which is closer to 50-50), I feel there is something we can do about getting a higher input. This could for instance be in making changes to our job description or by being present on other events.

In the last step - when the job is offered - the female job applicant indeed did not accept the job offer. I think this had to do with the type of contract that had been offered to the applicant and there being a better offer on the table at another company. However, as I am not entirely sure about this I will contact the applicant to find out more. Just to be clear, the same contract had been offered to the other job applicants that accepted the job offer.

Thank you also for advising me to have a better look at competitors and on how they perform concerning this topic! I think this will definitely lead to new insights!

Also, needless to say, you are absolutely right on keeping in mind different aspects of diversity :)! It is something we would like to have, however, realizing it is more challenging. It is also what Kristy said, in the end you do want to hire the best candidate, not because of their gender, ethnicity or whatsoever ;).

Thank you once more for your comment!

Re: 100+ sources that every innovation professional should know. (by @boardofinno)

Nickske — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 19:48:44 -0000

Interesting links and tools! Thanks for sharing

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Eric Gallegos — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 17:47:54 -0000

I agree with a lot of Kristy's points. But for me, there's a lot of potential insight to be gained
from analyzing some of the numbers you posted at each stage of the recruiting pipeline.

I’m not going to bring up the application stage, because I think you’d have to research industry demographics
to understand how you are performing when it comes to attracting women applicants.

However, once women begin the application process, their proportion stays consistent until you get to the
assessment day stage. After this stage, a smaller percentage receive an offer and no one who has been offered have accepted.

I feel this is the area that should be scrutinized first and foremost. Eliciting feedback from assessment
day participants is a good first step to understanding why this is the case. Perhaps there is something in the structure of the assessment, interactions, or environment which is off-putting.

But one potential course of action I didn’t see in your post was looking externally. For example, perhaps
studying best practices from some of your competitors or getting feedback from a colleague in another firm could be a path to insight into restructuring the hiring process/culture at BOI.

Lastly, in addition to gender diversity, I think it’s important for a growing innovation consultancy
to keep in mind other forms of diversity (cultural, educational, etc) that can add different perspectives to the workplace and enhance the creative quotient in your projects.

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Kristy Schoenberg — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:26:19 -0000

:). And I don't think you need to fluff it up with nicey-nice words. Just my opinion of course...

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Simon De Ruyter — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:00:51 -0000

Wow Kristy! Thanks!!! :)

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Kristy Schoenberg — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 08:56:34 -0000

Hi Simon,

I think it’s great you are thinking along the lines of how to shift your recruitment practice a bit to grab a larger pool of talented women. To be clear though the intent should be (and I think it is) to attract more candidates – not just hire more women. I’m a huge believer in hiring the best candidate – regardless of if they are male, female, alligator or Martian :).

Here is one tip to help (my $.02 of course – you can use it or trash it):

Your current “Our Office” section says this:

“Next to playing Pingpong and darts, our office is the creative hub to work on new innovations and collaborate with the rest of the team.”

My personal opinion - I would reword it like this:

“Our office is the creative hub for forward thinking entrepreneurs to work on new innovations and drive disruptive and meaningful change. On any given day you’ll find a team of brilliant creatives around the table to collaborate and build with.”

The reason for the change is because I think your target candidate population should be opened to include females ages 30-45 (and this
language will help). Given your corporate clientele – you need to attract
creative, professional women who understand the environment they will be
working in.

Most women this demographic aren’t attracted by the ping pong option.

As far as your job description for Innovation Consultant – I think the language is gender neutral and totally geared toward hiring a creative,
driven, self-motivating mind. The only thing I would change would be the images – the content is spot on.

Good luck with your hires!

K-

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Simon De Ruyter — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 05:07:59 -0000

Hi Kristy :)! I have just responded to your tweets. First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to give feedback to my blog post! I decided to write about this topic as it came up in our LinkedIn group. I think it is quite a challenging topic to talk about, and I think by your feedback I will be able to get things right. Thank you.

I think you are absolutely right about it being offensive to say that women take high expectations and ping pong as signs of aggression. What I was trying to do, was to find out why the amount of women applying for our job vacancy is lower than the amount of men. I listed a couple of possibilities and I tried to verify or rule them out while writing the blog post. One of the possibilities was written by Anjali on our LinkedIn page. She said that it might have something to do with the language and tone of our job description, and that men will find it more interesting than women. However, what I did wrong was in 1. generalizing women, 2. linking it to aggression, 3. describing job descriptions pitfalls as pitfalls and not 'possible' pitfalls, and 4. yes, over-thinking, that is me ;). I do think Anjali is right about the tone and the wording of the job description. That we can further optimize it to boost the amount of women applying at Board of Innovation. However, sourcing at different places for employees and communicating about the flexibility and freedom Board of Innovation offers to its employees are also of high importance.

Thank you once more for your response!

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Kristy Schoenberg — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 16:10:19 -0000

I love you guys and love what you do..(but) I have to say I think you are way over-thinking this. Quite honestly, dare I say it's actually a little offensive to say that women take things like "high expectations" and ping pong images as signs of aggression. As a female who prides herself on being more innovative and creative than many of the men around me - I think perhaps it's that you just aren't sourcing in the right places. I'm a hard ass on setting the bar high and most people have a hard time keeping up with me. I don't say that to be arrogant - I just say it because strong, smart, creative and driven women are out there. Sometimes you just have to look in the hidden places to find them. You also should understand that women today (especially smart women) want our cake and to eat it too. Meaning we want all the flexibility and freedom to work under our rules. I don't know what your culture is there but I would suggest that might be place to look. I'm sure there are plenty of women who would love to join your team - and the fact that you are looking for them should be commended! Good luck!

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

nickdemey — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 11:20:53 -0000

Thanks for the feedback. Improving the JOIN US page is a very practical thing we could do. More relevant pictures, words,... Good points!

Recently a woman in our workshop approached me at the end of the day. She made me aware that from the 120 slides I've used that day, just 1 had a woman on it. I couldn't believe this, I checked and it was true. Very embarrassing because this was of course not intentional. This will of course not happen again.

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

emmelem — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 07:50:01 -0000

I have enjoyed your post. Thank you! Perhaps because I am a female entrepreneur involved in the management of innovation, I feel particularly sensitive to everything you described. To make the story of my life short, generally, men are surprised to face a woman in this line of business. I am lucky enough to have had parental support and have studied as long as I wanted and the topics of my choice. I have a PhD and a MBA, and you would be surprised to see that it is what it takes for most men to start giving me credits when opposed to any other man profile. It's as if my degrees would comfort them as a compensation for my female status. Sad, hey? And very hard to cope with when this is embedded in our cultural codes. I am happy to see that it is changing slowly but I honestly think that having to justify yourself in your career/life choices probably put off a lot of women to enter career paths which are still uncommon for women.

Regarding a feedback on your analysis, i find it refreshing and congratulations for openly addressing this.

However, I believe that a good start would be the "join us" page. Did you notice that the main picture represents 4 men? And a 5th one... icon of the US army enrolling process ordering (the army way of course) "WE WANT YOU". Not really engaging. Not really innovative either by the way.
The wording of the job adds is really interesting and having read your post before the adds, I am not surprised that you had more women applying to the Change Agent one. Indeed, in the latter we see the words "nurture", "inspire", "people manager", "coach", "support talent"...everything a woman could relate to. On the Innovation Consultant one can read "You have what it takes to survive in our team". Survive?... Together with the army reference on the same page, it conveys the wrong stereotyped idea. Swap it with "to thrive" and it changes everything. The devil is in the details!
Once again, well done!

Re: How to design your own innovation accelerator: a checklist

Vincent Pirenne — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 05:32:35 -0000

Thanks for the feedback! I will certainly read the link you shared.

Re: How to design your own innovation accelerator: a checklist

Manoj Rawat — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 02:23:44 -0000

Great to read about “Creating own innovation accelerator”. It is really
needed in business organization to achieve business goals in time. Learn
more about Innovation Process and enhance innovation skills.

Re: How to design your own innovation accelerator: a checklist

Vincent Pirenne — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 18:00:59 -0000

Thanks!

Re: How to design your own innovation accelerator: a checklist

nickskillicorn — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 05:27:30 -0000

One of your best articles yet I think. Especially helpful is discussing the sorts of things which can change over the course of the programme, or what didn't go according to plan. Keep it up

Re: 21 Projects We Have Been Working On

Alejandro Torres — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 14:07:26 -0000

Hello, thanks for shearing, do you have contact information about Mexico projects, maybe job offers? thanks

Re: We came up with 30 ideas that big corporates should definitely implement.

WhiteTiger — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 13:11:24 -0000

A mechanism or tech that scans and analyze when u take something out a fridge and tells you how much calories it has or nutrition facts. I think it would make people more conscious and lead them to take better health decisions. You can maybe also save presets in it about family members and their health conditions. For eg:- it would scan a person too and if there is data saved in the system that the person has diabetes it would advise them against taking out desserts.

Re: We came up with 30 ideas that big corporates should definitely implement.

WhiteTiger — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 13:07:43 -0000

An app that collates and shows ratings/reviews of a specific restaurant or eatery from various review websites like

zomato, yelp etc hence making data more credible. Dont know if it already exists or not.

Re: We came up with 30 ideas that big corporates should definitely implement.

WhiteTiger — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 13:01:38 -0000

A fitness app that while registering asks for body dimensions (weight, height, waist) and cross references my physique with the ones in data

and then according to needs present a diet chart and exercise routine. there also shud be an option to customize

the diet and exercise routine and it should show how cutting on certain foods or adding them, cutting down some exercise or adding them would affect your physique. Input new data every month and gauge your progress.

Re: This is how launching on Product Hunt for the first time, hammered our expectations.

Adib Choudhury — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 11:00:17 -0000

Thanks for sharing your results! I've launched on Product Hunt a couple times now, and I made a launch guide based on my experiences (here: http://attentiv.com/product.... Good to see we had similar experiences, particularly leading up to the launch.

Re: This is how launching on Product Hunt for the first time, hammered our expectations.

Board of Innovation - Latest Comments

Re: The tools & templates used in a 3 day ideation brainstorm. (Part 1)

Re: 10 Essential Tips to Nail Your Next Hackathon

Re: This is how launching on Product Hunt for the first time, hammered our expectations.

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Re: 100+ sources that every innovation professional should know. (by @boardofinno)

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Re: Women in Innovation: We need more!

Re: How to design your own innovation accelerator: a checklist

Re: How to design your own innovation accelerator: a checklist

Re: How to design your own innovation accelerator: a checklist

Re: How to design your own innovation accelerator: a checklist

Re: 21 Projects We Have Been Working On

Re: We came up with 30 ideas that big corporates should definitely implement.

Re: We came up with 30 ideas that big corporates should definitely implement.

Re: We came up with 30 ideas that big corporates should definitely implement.

Re: This is how launching on Product Hunt for the first time, hammered our expectations.

Re: This is how launching on Product Hunt for the first time, hammered our expectations.

Re: 15 Business Models to copy + PDF Download with all cases

Re: 15 Business Models to copy + PDF Download with all cases