Innovation in Action

This week I had the pleasure of attending the 2007 Biztech Showcase event. I was to attend this partly through my involvement in Extreme Blue but mainly my involvement in ThinkPlace.

So that was a lot of buzzwords, so I'll try and break it down quickly:

• Extreme Blue - Internship scheme where we offer final year university undergrads the opportunity to work on cool technology projects over the summer to deliver real value to IBM and give them the opportunity to be see future recruitment.



• Biztech - BizTech offers employees the opportunity to participate in innovative cross-unit projects sponsored by executives and led by recognized technical leaders. This is typically achieved through employees contributing 20% of their time a week for a period of 9-12 months (with management approval of course!).



• ThinkPlace - IBM's WorldWide suggestion scheme where any employee can submit ideas, collaborate with each other and work with business leaders to get their ideas implements.

got all that? good.

All in all its been a fantastic couple of days and there are going to be some exciting improvements to our innovation programmes in the future. It's still too early to disclose the exact details, but at the very least we should see Biztech pushed much more in the UK and Thinkplace trying some very novel things to take our best grass roots innovators and pair them with the people in power.