innovation | Innovite Volvo IT

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Big Data – a problem or a promise?

The term “Big Data” is not well defined. It’s a buzzword used in many different ways for different reasons. I often notice a confusion between what is data and what is information. A huge lot of data doesn’t mean that we have a huge lot of information. The data is just ones and zeros or other ways to represent information but it is not information until we interpret the data into something understandable into our brains.

According to the analysis firm Gartner the amount of data in the world doubles every 18 months. That means that the last 18 months more data was generated than all other previous years combined. The question is how useful all this data is and how it can be utilized. Continue Reading →

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Innovation in Action 2012

Last week Volvo Information Technology co-hosted Innovation in Action 2012with partners including Tetra Pak, Ikea, SCA, and Ericsson to name a few. The summit, in its third year, was organised by the Innovation Pioneers Network with ten workshops run by the hosts over two days. Over two hundred people participated, mainly from other firms but also members from universities, start-ups and government. We were excited also to see a few others from the Volvo Group in attendance! Continue Reading →

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China and back!

Now I have been back in Sweden for one week and I feel that I need express some of the experiences that I have from the three month stay in Beijing.

Aaron and I at Computex in Tai Pei

Collegues at our office in Tianjin

We, Aaron and I, worked very intense to connect with interesting and valuable customers, colleagues and partners in China – enabling new networks and creating new capabilities for innovations to spur.

One great memory is our Innovation event in Shanghai on which we had the great luck to interact with some curious customers and technology providers from the region. More information at Volvo IT@Facebook

Some short reflections to sum-up the people in China and the city of Beijing

Warm people that loves children
High pace city that never sleeps
Great stable weather with a lot of sunshine
Risk taking occurs everyday in the traffic
Working in tall buildings gives you time to reflect and interact while waiting for and in elevators – creates time for innovation
Everything is big
Great food!!
Many technology providers that you never heard of before
Many innovative vehicles and methods for people and goods transports in the city
Parks are always full of people dancing and singing -creating energy for others
The land of big contrasts

The transition back to sweden has gone pretty well and right now we are planning for the upcoming innovation challenge – JAM IT. We will of course utilize our extended network of colleagues all around the world to find new ideas and to build cross functional knowledge within the corporation with the overall goal to generate net value to our customers.

I wish all of you some great months to come!

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Giving life to an Idea!

Guest blogger: Santosh Harakamani at Volvo IT in Bangalore, India. Santosh provided one of the winning ideas in our yearly innovation JAM!

It was reflection time for me at the end of a successful daylong workshop with Customer. A great day spent across the table with Customer; sharing the growth path, vision, strategy and more eager than us to try the prototype involving their customer and customer’s customer! It was a rare occasion when head of sales & marketing at customer and their regional teams spending full day with lots of energy and agreeing for the next joint plan.

Sounds like a good business meeting, just that it was not. The meeting was to discuss my idea “Telematics on School buses” selected at the JAM IT 2012. A proud moment seeing the idea has reached the customer to try the prototype jointly with VIT through a well-crafted and executed prototype model. Continue Reading →

From Vision to Reality – Innovation Exhibition at Volvo Group

Two weeks ago the team was involved in three-day long exhibition for people within the Volvo Group. The exhibition was coordinated from Group Trucks Technology and the purpose was to share interesting projects and prototypes between the function and units. Different sites all around the globe participated and we from Volvo IT, TWBI showcased seven different business innovation prototypes; covering many fields. We also participated in the seminar sessions in which two from the team spoke about how we go from vision to reality which was the theme for the entire event. I really enjoy these sessions where you have opportunities to meet and to discuss with peers within the Volvo group. Personally I had many interesting dialogues which hopefully can lead to interesting collaboration activities in the future.

Stephane Parisot in action at Innovation Event in Lyon

Business Innovation in an ever changing world

Image by Edwin Lee, www.fotopedia.com

Earlier this year, September, I got an opportunity to be part of the Pure Insight, Innovation Leader program. It was held at Manchester United’s arena Old Trafford. During their annual member summit I held a presentation about Tech Watch & Business Innovation; how we work and have worked during the last 7 years to identifying new innovation opportunities. This presentation was one of many but it was really interesting to listen to the the other participants from companies such as, Phillips, Unilever, Astra Zeneca, Ericsson etc. It seems that we all have similar challenges and barriers independent of the type of business, type of customers and also type of corporate culture. It also seems as we are developing in the right direction for exploring new business opportunities though innovative usage of new IT. Our slogan at TWBI is Small Scale -big impact and Fail Fast Fail Cheap. This is becoming more and more valid as the speed of change are increasing for each month.

You can find some interesting reads on the subject here:

Challenges for Business Innovation Units

Innovative Leadership to Navigate Uncertainty

Finding Creative People Is Easy (and Here’s How)

Pure insight

Innovation In Action 2011 (volvoitblog.com)

JAM IT – Volvo IT global innovation jam

Following up on last succesful JAM where our employees generated 274 really good ideas, we decided to start our 2011 global innovation jam, “JAM IT” this week.
All employees around the world (35 sites) are invited to collaborate together virtually to generate new ideas.
Our employees have the possibility to contribute with ideas, comment & build upon each others ideas and also invest in the best ideas – i.e. the “crowd” will decide upon the top 20 ideas that will move on to the next stage.

It’s so exciting to follow & contribute to this event, a lot of really good ideas, collaboration and discussions between different countries, cultures and departments. Energy & Passion!

China – a great experience

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So finally, after a lot of planning and many phone conferences with Chinese colleagues, Tommy and I got to experience the real thing.

China! So far away, but not as different as I had expected. However there were of course some obvious differences such as the architecture and language. What I found most striking was the spirit that we experienced. China has still a long way to go, but the people want, can and will develop! And everything moves in Maglev speed!

Wangfujing Street, Beijing Author: Nggsc (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)

So, maybe it is true, constraints and challenges really fuels innovation? At least that’s my experience after meeting and ideating with the people at Beijing Walker, Volvo Trucks Operation in Beijing and Volvo Construction Equipment in Shanghai. I’m really looking forward to continue this exciting journey with you!

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The Chinese language and internet (volvoitblog.com)
Worldexpo Shanghai 2010 (volvoitblog.com)

Prototyping & Creativity workshops in China & Japan

After two full weeks of travelling and working together with collegues in China and Japan I feel energized! The creativity workshops in Beijing, Shanghai and Ageo together with our collegues generated many, many ideas adopted to the local market needs. I remember that Kerstin and I tried to keep up with documenting all ideas about new services and applications for the aftermarket & Softproducts teams - sessions like this really gives me energy!

On going creativity Workshop

Service by Voice prototype testing in action

Many discussions we had during the trip was about reversed innovation and also how we could utilize the exponential growth on the consumer market to find solutions, consumerization, suitable for the local markets in Asia.
During a lunch at a restaurant close to the office in Beijing I noticed that the waiter used a standard feature phone and tapped in all our order in an application on the phone – this is exatcly the solutions that we need to explore and reverse back to the western countries. Using consumer products and applications inside the business processes would most certain allow us to develop solutions to a lower cost and with accepted functionally. A similar mindset and resoning that we used when developing our prototypes, Service by Voice and Connected Mechanic, that we tested at the Beijing walker dealership – enabling the mechanics to access service instruction via a smartphone application.

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