Defining your collaboration incentive

Defining your collaboration incentive

Collaboration incentives are a fundamental element of the challenge brief. They define the nature of the award to the best solutions.

 

Why offering a collaboration incentive?

When we first started the Innovation Days, we used to reward the winning teams with cash prizes. In time, we realised that cash prizes did not nurture ideas towards a follow up phase. Therefore, we now encourage corporate partners to offer collaboration incentives. Collaboration incentives are meant to increase the impact of the Innovation Days after the event. They reward good ideas over good teams.

 

What is an example of collaboration incentive?

Most of our corporate partners choose to invite the best  teams to a follow up workshop as a form of collaboration incentive. The follow up workshop shall be organized within two months from the Innovation Days in order to “keep momentum”. It is an opportunity for corporates to show their offices and production facilities to the Innovation Days participants and to introduce them to relevant players. During the follow up workshop it is possible to clarify mutual interests and expectations, as well as to start planning the next steps. Follow up workshops may lead to a range of outcomes from research agreements to pilot projects. Yet, it is the corporate partner who decides what to offer and to whom.

Other examples of collaboration incentives include, but are not limited to, paid/unpaid internship and theses work.

 

Is the Innovation Days team involved in the collaboration incentive?

Our team connects corporate partners and participants after the Innovation Days. Yet, it is the responsibility of the corporate partner to deliver on the collaboration incentive. The involvement of the Innovation Days teams in the collaboration incentive can be discussed on a case basis.

Any accruing expense relative to the collaboration incentive (travel costs, material, etc…) needs to be covered by the corporate partner.

 

Is it possible to offer complimentary rewards to the collaboration incentive?

Although it is not required, corporate partners can complement their collaboration incentive with other awards such as branded items, in kind prizes or tickets to events among the others. We leave it up to the corporate partners to decide if and what to offer as an additional prize.

 

To whom should you offer a collaboration incentive?

The collaboration incentive has to be offered primarily to the winning team in your category. However, many corporate partners open up their follow up workshop to other teams and participants. In fact, often in times not every member of the winning team is interested in being involved in the follow up. Extending the invitation to the follow up workshop is a way to increase the chances of finding interested candidates to work on developing promising ideas further.

The collaboration canvas that participants fill on the last day of the Innovation Days helps corporate partners to decide whom to invite. On the collaboration canvas you can see a list of possible collaboration mechanisms and the names of interested participants indicated next to each of them. You can find a digital version of the collaboration canvas on the last page of the pitch deck handed in by the teams.

 

Keeping us updated

It is always nice to hear what happened after the Innovation Days. We encourage corporate partners and participants to share the outcomes of the collaboration incentives on one of our social media channels:

Innovation Days Community

Linkedin page

or emailing us a brief recap to be published on our Blog.

 

SOME BEST PRACTICES FROM OUR PAST EVENTS

 

Volvo Cars workshop – Innovation Days Sweden 2018