Increasing the impact of innovation teams within the company

As the most admired telco in Europe, and third in the world, according to Fortune Magazine, Telefónica is one of the most prominent global innovators. Through their Innovation Squads, they aim to spread the maker mentality across the company and move away from a siloed structure that may create an unnecessary barrier for ideas.

Telefónica wanted to develop a work and management model for the Innovation Squads to increase their impact, improve operational efficiency, and help scale the Talentum program while improving their overall employee experience.

Along with the client team we developed a proprietary methodology, based on the principles of design thinking and agile methodologies, to create innovation units, the Talentum Squads, that could integrate within the company’s workflow on every level to increase their impact and attract new talent to the company by improving the overall employee experience in the before during and after of the experience.

In order to identify the current status of the employee experience, we conducted initial strategic research that would help us make a preliminary audit. This allowed us to understand the goals and motivations of the people involved in the program, as well as the barriers they may encounter.

Talentum is an innovation program that integrates different elements: young talent, open innovation, mentors, agile methodologies, and toolkits. We co-created a proprietary methodology to integrate all of the moving pieces and obtain outstanding results after each program. This methodology included Agile, Design Thinking, and Learning modules.

We designed the experience of the participants of the Talentum program, along with the methodology, by defining all the touchpoints and milestones that should be accomplished in each edition of the program. We also defined clear KPIs that would allow for the evaluation of the program and team members.