Porsche Holding | Ideas management with 35,000 employees

PHS innoVentures, Porsche Holding's innovation community, is an integral part of the company's evolve 2030 strategy. Under the vision "Shaping Mobility for a better future", Porsche Holding and its international employees are actively shaping the mobility revolution in the automotive industry. Innovations are of great importance for the successful further development of new business models and individual mobility solutions for the company's customers. The PHS innoVentures team focuses both on internal innovation activities and at the same time pursues venture approaches outside the company.

PHS InnoVentures has been using AnyIdea since 2023, enabling systematic idea management for more than 35,000 employees from 29 countries. In an interview with Laurenz Gregor, Innovation Manager at PHS InnoVentures, we were able to find out how AnyIdea successfully supports them in their cross-border innovation projects. 

Porsche Holding Salzburg

Porsche Holding Salzburg is Europe's largest automobile trading company. As a 100% subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, it represents the brands of the Volkswagen Group in the wholesale, retail and after-sales business, generates a turnover of 25.8 billion euros and employs around 35,000 people who sell more than 656,200 new cars and almost 190,000 used cars. In addition, it covers the entire spectrum of the automotive trade with spare parts sales, automotive financial services and its own IT system development.

Initial situation

What challenges and pain points did you experience before implementing AnyIdea with regard to idea management and foresight?

We have an enormous amount of expertise within our company, but this was previously difficult to pool due to the decentralized distribution and large number of employees. Employees with ideas, problems or solutions initially had no structured way of systematically recording them and working on them. In the past, they brought their ideas directly to their superiors, who then tried to work out solutions. This had the advantage of a clear reporting channel, but often meant that the reach was limited and the right contacts in the company were not always reached.

Faced with these challenges, the internal organization was tasked with creating a solution that promotes the exchange of ideas among employees. AnyIdea was implemented in response to these needs to provide an efficient idea management and foresight platform.

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‍"Innovations are an integral part of our organization that promote the further development of our business model. In AnyIdea, we have found a strong partner that reliably supports us in the area of idea management." - Laurenz Gregor

How do you organize such a huge innovation community?

Prior to the introduction of a digital platform, the focus was on organizing the innovation community in 29 countries. This involved establishing"Inno-Touchpoints" as local contacts for innovations. On this organizational basis, the aim was to create a platform on which the more than 35,000 employees could exchange and present their innovative ideas.

The combination of Inno-Touchpoints and AnyIdea makes it easier to submit ideas and enables more targeted evaluation and tracking by the relevant departments. As a result, we have achieved a broader reach and lowered the barrier for employees to contribute their ideas. Employees from different regions, including Chile, Colombia, Malaysia and other locations, can now easily submit ideas and participate in campaigns. This has significantly increased our capacity for innovation and allows us to harness the potential of our diverse teams.

"AnyIdea is a tool to inspire the innovation community and offer employees reach." - Laurenz Gregor

Why AnyIdea?

What special features or experiences ultimately led you to choose AnyIdea?

After looking at various providers, our choice fell relatively quickly on AnyIdea due to a number of decisive factors. These included factors such as data security in Europe due to its Austrian origin and the ability to cover the entire innovation process, including AI-based trend management. User-friendliness and ease of use were particularly decisive factors. In addition, there was the personal, fast support, the acceptance and implementation of feedback and, last but not least, the smooth implementation, which is remarkable with a connection of almost 35,000 employees.

Idea campaigns & projects

Who and how many people take part in idea campaigns?
How many ideas are already being implemented?

An important step at the beginning was to familiarize a large number of employees with the tool. For the introduction and initial use of AnyIdea, we opted for a large-scale ideas campaign on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for three different use cases.

In the run-up to the first ideas campaign, we held a large event with expert presentations on the topic of AI, which was attended by almost 1,000 people. After this event, the call for ideas for the "AI&You" campaign was launched in AnyIdea and published on the intranet. Around 800 employees joined the ideas campaign after the presentation.

Shortly after the event, 40 ideas had already been submitted. All 40 ideas turned out to be promising, and the evaluators (Inno-Touchpoints) were able to evaluate and select the best ideas based on a predefined evaluation scheme. This made it clear that many employees already had good ideas that were just waiting to be given a place.

In the course of this campaign, a total of five outstanding ideas have emerged, three of which have already entered the implementation phase.

Advice

...with regard to idea campaigns and management

For other companies that want to introduce idea campaigns and idea management, including with AnyIdea, we have the following advice:

• It requires good and far-reaching communication of the topic and the issue in advance before a campaign is launched. We also recommend using the intranet or other means of communication to arouse the interest and participation of employees.
• It should be noted that the tool does not spread on its own. It requires active promotion and support in order to gain the necessary attention and participation.
• We recommend holding workshops to actively promote the tool and encourage employees to submit ideas and actively participate in idea management, for example as part of a design thinking workshop. 

Foresight with AnyIdea

What does the future hold?

In 2024, we want to become even more active in terms of idea management and trend scouting. Instead of large campaigns, we will run smaller campaigns with AnyIdea at country level and focus on specific areas. We are even considering holding design thinking workshops in certain areas or countries.

We plan to expand our innovation strategy in the current year through intensified foresight and trend scouting with the use of AnyIdea. AnyIdea actively supports us in identifying new trends and technologies in our main areas of business and at the same time enables us to continuously track important developments in areas such as artificial intelligence, Web 3.0 and mobility and retrieve the latest information on them. This saves us time, which we can invest profitably in the realization of our projects.

In addition, this year we want to focus particularly on the use of AI scouts in areas that are not directly part of our core business but hold the potential for future innovations.

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Further details: 

• AnyIdea Foresight
• AnyIdea Ideation
• Data-driven innovation management

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