Many SMEs are born from an innovation, and it is not always easy to keep this at the heart of the strategy once the company has reached a certain degree of maturity. To achieve this and continue to innovate, it must be made a priority. This is the case of Prinoth, where all employees participate in a project that aims to develop a culture of innovation.
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At its Granby plant, which has 250 employees, the company builds snow groomers and tracked utility vehicles for a variety of applications that can go places wheeled vehicles can’t. Previously a division of Bombardier, the company was then sold to Camoplast, then to the Italian Prinoth.
Born from innovation, the company has put the concept at the heart of its activities, at all levels.
“A few years ago, we launched a culture of innovation project,” explains Marc-Alain Guérin, Certified Human Resources Advisor (CRHA) and Coordinator, Human Resources, at Prinoth. We really wanted to invent a culture of innovation in all our activities, and not just in engineering and product development. »
At the heart of this project are our employees. For us, the definition of innovation is quite simple: it is something new that creates value.
Marc-Alain Guérin, Coordinator, Human Resources, at Prinoth
Concretely, working committees have been created to work on the five foundations of innovation: collaboration, creativity, structure, autonomy and risk.
“Our goal is that all our activities take these foundations into account in order to strengthen, improve and use them,” he adds. We started with a survey of all our employees to ask them what innovation meant to them. Our working groups have explored these foundations and submitted project proposals. There were people who had worked here for 25 years who had never worked together. »
To support it in this shift, the company called on the services of Michel Landry, founding president of the consulting firm L.Tech Solution and specialist in innovation, who led the Prinoth team to use the design thinking approach. Based on the training of industrial designers, this approach is focused on the needs of the user and on six main stages: understand, observe, define, ideate, “prototype”, launch.
“Prinoth wanted to review its way of working to innovate more, among other things,” says Michel Landry. The culture of innovation is the starting point of everything. »
Even when a company equips itself with very good work tools, if it does not have an innovative culture, the tools will not be used well.
Michel Landry, founding president of the consulting firm L.Tech Solution
“The culture of innovation is a matter of know-how,” continues the specialist. It therefore differs from innovation management, which is more concerned with the development of processes or products and services. Organizations often want more tools to be efficient, but we realize that we also have to change the organizational culture to get there. »
As part of this process, Prinoth has appointed innovation agents who have undergone further training in design thinking.
“We now have multidisciplinary teams working on all kinds of innovation projects, and innovation agents who are assigned to these projects and manage the teams,” explains Marc-Alain Guérin. Among the projects launched, there is the employee health and well-being program which is off the beaten track. »