IFS Innovation Award 2012

The winner of the IFS Innovation Award—“from idea to business value”—was announced on October 15, 2012 at the IFS World Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden. 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.”

“We are always searching for intelligent solutions that can simplify businesses’ or users’ work processes. Although our ambition has never been to invent new trends, we are constantly looking for innovative ways to combine existing ideas that result in real business value.
We ask ourselves: “How can this technology benefit the user?” If the answer is “it can’t”, we leave it by the wayside. If we find real potential in the idea, we implement it into our portfolio”,

“Whatever technology we choose to explore, it must always center on the user and offer a productive, elegant and enjoyable work environment,”

Dan Matthews, IFS CTO