Sponsored by Lovinklaan Foundation, the Quick Launch Imagine Awards celebrates the creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit of Arcadians. The awards offer individual Arcadians and teams to submit their innovation ideas with the chance to win $10,000 and a personal mentor to further develop their vision.
In early March, the Assessment Team narrowed the pool of selected projects down to 10. The Assessment Team consists of 10 members in total and is broken down into two teams to ensure they all have sufficient time to examine eleven ideas and ease the burden on the selection process.
1: Team Innovation@Arcadis: – Todd Bechtel, Mary John, Jamye Harrison, Lidewij de Haas, Bram Mommers
2: Team ThankYouLovinklaan: – Holly Herner, Tom Verhoeven, Matthé van Baalen, John Horst, Nilesh Parmar
We asked the members of Team ThankYouLovinklaan about their experience reviewing the submitted projects. Here is what they had to say:
Last month, we had the great honor to take part in the assessment process for the newly redesigned Quick Launch Imagine Awards. Being able to come together as a team from different functions and regions to review such a wonderful pool of ideas and initiatives – with the potential of bringing them to life – really brought to light the exceptional talent that lies within Arcadis.
The creativity of Arcadians is always astounding, and it was uplifting to engage with global colleagues on such a wide range of ideas from all across Arcadis. We were granted a brilliant opportunity to come together and share our thoughts on which submissions might best support the positive impact we aspire to achieve as a business. We were really interested in where there was true novelty, global potential, and the ability to strengthen how our people and clients work together.
What were you looking for when reviewing projects?
As a team, we worked together to decide which projects should be put forward into the next round. However, with so many creative initiatives, it can be difficult to decide. Overall, we were looking for ideas that were in line with Arcadis’ strategy, met a client or market need, and could be expanded to make the investment worthwhile.
Some of the key questions we had considered were:
- Is the idea really addressing relevant problems that would benefit society and our Clients?
- How innovative is an idea or does the contain innovative elements that will bring us a competitive advantage?
- How scalable is an idea from a desirability, feasibility and viability point of view and can it be scaled globally?
- How will the idea boost Arcadis’ operational excellence of professional services or disrupt the market with the aim to serve our clients even better than we already do?
- Do we understand the market desire for the proposed solution?
How was the assessment process?
The assessment process was very efficient in that the partnership with the Innovation Framework and Quick Launch allowed for easy submittal of ideas and access to all regions and groups. Additionally, the streamlined and digital process via Quick Launch also resulted in over 600 proposals. As a group, we were able to review the proposals and discuss our different perspectives on ideas from an initial impression – a complement to the value of creative dialogue in innovation.
Although this year was a great success, it would be wonderful to see an even greater turnout in future years to encourage more Arcadians to think outside of the box and work towards bringing their vision to life. In addition, recognition of the winners by Arcadis CEO Peter Oosterveer and the People’s choice aspect will surely drive excitement!
Overall, it was incredible to witness firsthand the enthusiasm of Arcadians all over the globe while experiencing how our digital transformation is resulting in tangible, innovative ideas that will boost operational excellence of professional services with the aim to serve our clients even better than we already do.
We look forward to seeing how the selected projects come to life and hope to have even more submissions next year!
Sincerely,
The Assessment Team
