NOVOMATIC Lottery Solutions (NLS) presented “Stayin’ Alive.”
Pall Palsson, Senior Director, Corporate Innovation & Strategy, and Agnieszka Rylska, Marketing Manager, NOVOMATIC Lottery Solutions (NLS) talked about how they built an innovation culture.
First, Palsson and Rylska stressed you need creative and passionate people working for your organization, but you also need to give them a chance to be innovative. NLS achieves this by holding a competition once a year called “Heavy Mental,” which originally started back in 2010. Each year the theme changes; in 2017, it was “Passion for Innovation.”
“People come up with innovative ideas, such as new products, new technology, or changes in the company they would like to see,” Rylska said.
“Once people have an idea, they submit it through an online portal,” added Palsson. “It can be either technical or non-technical ideas because we don’t just want the engineering departments to take part, but all parts the company. People can work on their ideas alone or they gather into teams which can be cross-department.”
The employee contest has the obvious benefit of creating an innovative culture in NLS, but it also creates a team culture and identifies talent. From an executive standpoint, it also reveals the mindset of NLS employees. If a particular year is very busy, a lot of the ideas that are submitted have to do with work flow related issues.
What are the Heavy Mental benefits for NLS? “Innovation culture. Great useful ideas. Improves how we work. Brings people together (team spirit!) even across departments and countries. Identifies talent (and the cursed one). Allows us to identify what our staff is most interested in. Amazing pictures,” concluded Palsson.
