Marina Geymonat, head of Sisal’s Innovation Lab will be at ITWeek on September 30th at 2pm in Sala Fucine
Being at the head of Sisal’s Innovation Lab for Marina Geymonat it means being faced with a changing world every day, but above all trying to understand how to make it change in the right way. In fact, change does not always have to come with a clean cut, on the contrary, when we talk about companies it is important to understand how to sow the seeds of innovation slowly and let them grow day after day.
His work at Innovation Lab, which was born in the summer of 2021, is just that, managing the transition and change for a sector such as gaming looking to the future, to the world of blockchain and responsible gaming, but with good feet. planted in what is working, in business, in good practices not to be abandoned.
One of the most important challenges for Geymonat is “The ability to make innovation an effective innovation, because this is where so many projects break down, especially the most radical ones – as he will tell at the Italian Tech Week 2022 -. This is why innovation must be instead perceived as a positive improvement, which does not create obstacles to everyday life but rather implements its operational capacity and development. This model can be applied to a single company, to a single sector, but also to an entire nation or continent ” .
In fact, innovation, change and adaptation to the challenges of the future are an extremely important topic that has been confined to debates for too long without ever being really applied. Let us think of the issues of environmental protection, energy, Europe’s competitive capabilities vis-à-vis the rest of the world.
“The only chance we have to be equal is open innovation – continues Geymonat – a way of working based on collaboration, the network and the consequent ability to enhance all skills across the various industrial sectors. It is important from the outset to make the discussion and change extremely transversal and inclusive, that is, capable of involving and crossing all departments of the company, not just those strictly concerned “.
It is therefore necessary to work on issues such as training and organization. The whole company must know what those who deal with innovation do and those who innovate must know how to listen and be understood by the whole company. And since large organizations are necessarily structured vertically, the challenge is to be cross-cutting, avoid the “ivory tower effect” and work on adopting innovations that work. A theme that until recently was underestimated, but which has become crucial for a world that moves faster and faster.
Sisal’s recipe for innovation is based on the experience gained in this year and on the many years that Geymonat spent at the Tim Research Center in Turin: each branch of the company has a manager who deals with innovation and who gradually submits small innovations and changes that do not upset the work processes, but dilute them in the system and then record any benefits and correct any negative effects. And then you also need people who are involved in implementing those ideas, others who find the right talents that the company is missing and so on.
But innovation also needs to mix with ideas that can come from the outside. From this point of view, Sisal has found in GoBeyond, its call for ideas program, the ideal access point both for Sisal itself and for all the companies that participate in it. In this way Sisal can invest in new entrepreneurial realities and the latter can make a difference with solutions with a high social impact.
GoBeyond in recent years has acquired more and more importance in the Italian panorama and is one of the most coveted competitions for Italian startups.
And although Sisal is a betting company, the Innovation Lab reminds us that a good bettor never invests in the dark, because innovation is a process, it is a path made up of successes and corrections, but not a game of ‘ gamble.