Brian Hoff, vice-president of innovation at energy producer Exelon, discussed the ways he built innovation strategies and culture of collaboration in an interview moderated by Paul Donnellan, a partner at advisory firm Clareo which is a silver sponsor for this year’s Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit program.
Hoff began saying that support from the chief executive is critical for creating a culture of innovation. In his case, Exelon’s CEO realised the firm needed to identify companies that leveraged new technologies and called on him to find and incorporate the technologies at the company.
Exelon executives also realised that thousands of employees had long been told how to work without the opportunity to ask questions about their work. They built an internal system of collaboration between corporates and fieldworkers to get field employees more involved in their work.
Hoff said: “We have worked with Clareo to build a culture of innovation at Exelon, a culture where our leaders and employees embrace the changes underway in our industry and seek out new opportunities for growth and efficiencies.
“We are constantly looking for ways to inspire people to create new ideas, iterate, investigate and implement those ideas — while creating an encouraging and enabling environment in which to do so.”