Winner of IFS™ Innovation Award announced

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, announces that the IFS Innovation Award jury has chosen a winner of the first IFS Innovation Award—“from idea to business value”. The winner is Martin Kvapilik, whose idea of an Innovation Club with Visitor Sourcing met the jury’s criteria of originality, impact, practicality, and measurability.

The winning application—an innovation club with visitor sourcing—was recognized as an innovative take on an old idea: the suggestion box. However, instead of a physical box that is open to everyone, usually with a monetary reward as the main incentive, Martin’s idea pivots on targeted-members-only innovation clubs, in which truly creative and innovative individuals are driven and challenged by their peers through social media technologies.

According to the jury’s measurement criteria, “Martin’s innovation has the potential to attract people with different perspectives into an organization’s innovation effort. It encourages and drives individual involvement and fosters a permanent innovation ecology in an organization. It has a broad appeal across all industries, builds on existing technology, and can be realized with a reasonable effort.”

The jury consists of Alastair Sorbie, IFS CEO, Joe Barkai, Research Vice President, Product Lifecycle Strategies for IDC Manufacturing, Magnus Höij, Editor in Chief IDG Internetworld, Cindy Jaudon, President & CEO of IFS Americas, Dan Matthews, IFS CTO and Head of IFS Labs and Thomas Säld, Head of IFS R&D.

“I am pleased to announce the winner of the first IFS Innovation Award,” IFS CEO Alastair Sorbie said. “Martin’s solution is perfectly in line with IFS’s innovation philosophy. We believe that when it comes to innovation—be it technological or business-related—there truly is strength in numbers. We look forward to our continued collaboration with Martin within the framework of an IFS Labs project.”

“It is a great honor to win the IFS Innovation Award,” Martin Kvapilik said. “My solution is based on a simple idea: collaboration breeds innovation. I am very much looking forward to seeing my sketch turned into a fully-fledged product prototype.”

As a member of the innovation club, membership is granted for a limited time and continued membership is earned by contributing new ideas and commenting on others. Non-members have visibility of the proposed innovations to drive curiosity and interest to join the clubs. Martin’s idea combines innovation clubs with visitor sourcing, leveraging the fact that people visiting an organization, be it for a week or just for an hour, have a different perspective compared to employees. Visitors can join innovation clubs and participate through an application on their smartphone.

In addition to being awarded the cash price of EUR 10.000 at the IFS World Conference, Martin’s innovation club will be converted into a prototype by IFS Labs, starting immediately after the conference.

About IFS

IFS is a public company (OMX STO: IFS) founded in 1983 that develops, supplies, and implements IFS Applications™, a component-based extended ERP suite built on SOA technology. IFS focuses on industries where any of four core processes are strategic: Service & asset management, manufacturing, supply chain and projects. The company has 2,000 customers and is present in approximately 60 countries with 2,800 employees in total. Net revenue in 2011 was SKr 2.6 billion.
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