One of the biggest blockers to innovation within any organisation is time. When we’re all so busy with our day jobs, how can we possibly carve out space in our diaries to devote some thought to a new idea or method? One solution is to block out a day and get away from the laptop, which is exactly what the ScottishPower cross-business Innovation Group did recently.
The Innovation Group is an informal collective from across the business, comprising a wide range of colleagues working in innovation roles, digital transformation and new areas of business for ScottishPower. Meeting once a quarter, at least one of these meetings a year is off-site, giving the team some space to think differently and be inspired.
In June, the Group spent a day with one of our key academic partners, Imperial College London, touring facilities, meeting academics and hearing pitches from start-ups within the ICL ecosystem. Splitting our time across Imperial’s main South Kensington Campus and the Scale Space Innovation Hub in White City, the group saw the breadth of academic capabilities at an institution that has just been named the UK’s top university, beating Oxford and Cambridge for the first time.
The Group were given a demonstration of Imperial’s Data Visualisation Suite within the Data Science Institute at Imperial. In the Data Observatory researchers create captivating visualisations that transcend the data points on which they are built. Real world, real-time data visualisations – such as mapping the intricate transactions and trends within the cryptocurrency world, or overlaying commuter data from London’s Santander bikes scheme onto live traffic information and the underground tube network – demonstrated that the Data Observatory isn’t just a room with screens. As the group was told, used effectively, it’s a portal to insights, bridging academia, industry, and society.
After a hard hat tour of the Carbon, Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) pilot plant that lies at the heart of the UK’s largest Carbon Capture and Storage research program, the Group visited ICL’s innovation campus, which is at the centre of the on-going regeneration of White City in the west of London. Here, the university has created an ecosystem of start-up and scale-up businesses, partially curated through their successful Greenhouse start-up incubator. Imperial brings in and supports small enterprises, either spun out from their own academic research or from outside the university, allowing them space to iterate their ideas and grow their businesses and skills. The group heard a pitch from an innovative start-up in the long duration storage space, and explored how ScottishPower can work with the Imperial ecosystem to mutual benefit.
After a packed day of ideas and inspiration, the challenge now for the Innovation Group is to find the time within our day jobs to follow up and realise the opportunities ahead through collaboration with our external partners.