News

This year’s Partner Companies Day Forum was held in Collbató on May 30th, 2011 and was organised in collaboration with the Companies Department and the Innovation Centre.

The General Director of EADA, Miquel Espinosa, welcomed the attendees and gave an introduction on the phenomenon of innovation in the current crisis scenario.

This was followed by a Round Table where Pilar Jericó, Xavier Guix and Franc Ponti presented three different yet complementary approaches to innovation.

Pilar Jericó spoke of innovation in management and laid emphasis on collaborative phenomena, collective intelligence, power distribution, innovator activism and explorative leadership.

Her fundamental message was that without intrinsically motivated people (who do things because they want to do them and because they enjoy what they do, monetary considerations aside) it is impossible to build innovation environments.

Xavier Guix spoke about the mental aspects of innovating. In order to be creative, he said, we need to get out of the bottle (if we are the water) and look at our environment with a spirit of learning and collaboration; if our beliefs are negative, we will never be creative individuals.

Franc Ponti pronounced a message in favour of change, which is always necessary if we want to innovate. Although a thing works, we need to begin thinking about changing it because if not, someone will do it for us. He gave different examples of companies that have changed what seemed to be immovable: mobile phones made of paper, restaurants hidden under the sign of a drycleaners, new ways of dating which do away with convention...

The more practical part of the day forum was presented by Clara Bartra, Chief Innovation Manager at Gallina Blanca Star, who gave a detailed presentation of this prestigious food products company’s innovation model: metrics for innovating, innovation culture, specific marketing actions...

Clara Bartra stated that if they hadn’t implemented their innovation system, it would have been even more complicated for the company to get through the current crisis scenario.

Finally, Elba Pedrosa and Belén Varela of Believe in You (BiU) gave a surprise session where they represented an ingenious experiential learning scenario based on the Cinderella fairy tale.