Context

A Mid-size Electric Utility company ($2.5B+ ARR) was experiencing a common problem: random acts of innovation occurring across the company in functional siloes (IT, Operations, Strategy, etc.), with no cohesive goal or unifying structure. Our team was engaged to deliver a day-long workshop including a group of 20+ executives across these functions with 3 main objectives:

• Showcase cutting edge technologies used to create value across industries
• Provide coaching on innovation best practices
• Create strategic alignment to drive ongoing innovation across the organization

My Role

As an Innovation Manager, my role was to leverage Deloitte's vast innovation network to identify examples of high-tech solutions we've delivered for our clients that would drive inspiration and impact for the executive group. During the workshop, I would be responsible for presenting these solutions, as well as facilitating reflection and application of the technologies through the lens of innovation best practices.

Leading up to the session, I worked with my team to perform stakeholder interviews, identifying technologies of interest to the group including AI & ML, AR/VR, IoT, and robotics as well as operational challenges the organization was currently facing. I also performed market research to understand current trends and opportunities in the power & utilities sector. Together, these insights allowed me to identify a few potential innovation focus areas, which I then took to our client sponsor to refine and prioritize down to the following:

• Predictive Maintenance
• Supplier Ecosystem Management
• Workforce Augmentation

With these in mind, I worked with designers, developers, and subject-matter experts across the organization to create hands-on demonstrations illustrating how the identified technologies of interest can be used to move the needle on these focus areas.

During the session, I delivered these demonstrations and facilitated discussions on how the underlying technologies and capabilities could be used to create value for the organization. The session culminated in an activity where the executives broke into groups, took the technologies and capabilities we had explored, and combined them together to create innovative "big bets" of their own. They then pitched these bets to one another, providing feedback and refinement on the concepts they had created. While this activity was entertaining and energizing, it also created the cross-functional alignment and momentum they needed to drive tech-enabled innovation forward at their organization.