Inspiring collaborative behaviour in a corporate venturing environment

Many huge companies are struggling to keep their innovation funnel filled and to transform their ventures into successful new businesses, Philips is one of those. This thesis focuses on improving the performance of ventures through collaboration and knowledge sharing.

A literature review of Internal Corporate Venturing (ICV) revealed the challenges that ventures within big multinational companies are facing. Twenty two interviews with ICV stakeholders within Philips revealed which challenges intrapreneurs at Philips are facing. Furthermore, different meetings were attended to determine best practices of transferring knowledge.

Integrating the internal and external analyses resulted in a clear overview of why the core business in Philips is performing so well, while the ventures are not. An RCA+ analysis led to the exploration of the search area of ‘venture interaction’.

Another deep dive into that search area was performed to explore and define boundaries of the search area. Using different brainstorming sessions and techniques, three high-potential concepts were created. Using Harris profiles, the most promising concept was determined.

The chosen concept was refined through different iterations into the Synergy platform. The platform solves the three main information needs of users using different gamification elements; (1) sharing knowledge, (2) finding knowledge, and (3) finding experts. Next to the platform, two roadmaps were created in order to ensure user adoption to develop an active and engaging platform.

Validating the platform with potential future users provided insights into how the platform would be used and what improvements could still be made. The engagement roadmap showed to confront many of the challenges that previous platforms had faced. Furthermore, some users would use the platform, while others would not. Next to that, it would cost a lot of money to implement such a platform company-wide, however, it is still feasible. Lastly, some improvements were identified that would make the platform even more valuable to Philips. Those improvements have immediately been implemented into the final design of the Synergy platform.

See the end result here.