Innovative Swedish digital developer Vocean conducted a lightning-fast workshop to demonstrate the strength of its idea platform during a network meeting of 30 companies. The result was an unparalleled success.
Vocean develops and sells a digital platform that can be utilized to, for example, collect thoughts, ideas and opinions from people both inside and outside organizations around the world. All the collected data can be easily compiled into reports and insights using Artificial Intelligence. These reports can then be used as a basis for future decision-making and dialogue.
Vocean has been a member of BNI Let’s Unite, a Stockholm-based business network of 30 member companies, since April 2021. The group is part of BNI (Business Network International) – an international business network that spans 74 countries and has over 10,000 teams around the world. BNI’s agenda is to lift member companies and stimulate global business. One event on its agenda is called Speaker of the Week, where a group member gets the opportunity to talk about their company, service or product for ten minutes.
On April 28th this year it was Vocean’s turn to be Speaker of the Week, and the company got the opportunity to show off its powerful platform for gathering ideas. The BNI meeting was conducted via Zoom.
Gathering an ocean of ideas – before the meeting
One day before the meeting Vocean created an activity on its idea platform. The question participants were asked to contemplate was: “How do you think the way we work will change after Covid-19”? All participants were invited to generate ideas for the activity via email and LinkedIn. That very same evening a large number of ideas had already been submitted to the platform – ideas that were visible for everyone to see.
Rewarding digital co-creation – during the meeting
Vocean began the Speaker of the Week segment at the BNI meeting with a three-minute presentation of the company and its vision. Participants were then divided into seven breakout rooms, where they could discuss the ideas that had been submitted to the platform before the meeting. The platform is easy to navigate, and its workboard makes hundreds of ideas visible to everyone.
During the breakout room discussions, several new ideas emerged that were also entered into the idea platform by the participants themselves and made instantly visible to everyone in the meeting. Only the idea is visible on the platform, not the creator of the idea. This is done to ensure participants aren’t influenced by the personality behind an idea – but rather the idea itself. After just three minutes in the breakout rooms all the participants were asked to like – give the thumbs up – to three ideas on the platform.
The breakout room sessions came to an end, and participants returned to the meeting for a four-minute summary. The ideas that were shortlisted were discussed, and Vocean started a poll on the platform to determine which one of them the participants liked best.
In just ten minutes people from 30 member companies had participated in a workshop, generated, collected and documented dozens of creative ideas and participants had also been given the opportunity to react to them. During the meeting the platform’s chat function was busy with participants expressing how positive they were about the way ideas were being gathered.
Intelligence reporting – after the meeting
When the meeting was over, Vocean compiled an intelligence report on the idea platform, which was immediately sent out to every participant via email. The report was based on the ideas that got the most likes, as well as the result of the poll.
Positive feedback – some participator comments
Comments about Vocean’s idea platform streamed in both during and after the workshop – all of them overwhelmingly positive.
Here’s just a small selection:
“Can warmly recommend Vocean’s digital platform for idea generation, which many people struggle to achieve in the digital space. Flexible, efficient, creative and democratic. And I love how easy it is to create reports and have full control of knowledge acquisition and the results after the meeting”. Jessica Stark, BNI Coordinator
“Could this be the world’s fastest workshop ever”?
“What an amazingly fast and concise workshop”!
“I’ll be using this as soon as I can”.
“A great tool that we will definitely test out”!
“I think you have created a fantastic tool that will make it easier for companies to become more agile”.
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