Fuelling an
innovative culture
within McLaren Applied
In a time when McLaren Applied changed strategic direction from a consultancy to a product company. The importance for the company to utilise their technology and IP to develop quick and compelling solutions was communicated. An entrepreneurial and innovative mindset and culture was encouraged.
I engaged with company directors and proposed internal research to evaluate the companies ability and desire to have an entrepreneurial culture and identify barriers preventing innovation with the aim to solve them.
Deliver innovation barriers
Define strategies to understand employee mindsets on innovation and unpick knowledge gaps, frustrations, limitations, etc
Scope project and budget
Defining goals, process and budget along the design and development process
Facilitate innovation
process
Led a team through the innovation process to help solve barriers hindering an innovative culture
Responsible for user experience
Ensured solutions meet employee needs and expectations
Deliver new tools to encourage innovation
01 My role
Led the definition, development and deployment process
02 Our learning
The biggest barriers preventing an innovative culture within McLaren are;
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Lack of knowledge on what technology and capability McLaren Applied has
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A feeling of being overloaded and not having the time to innovate
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The inability to connect with the right people and drive ideas forward.
03 What we delivered
Three digital solutions that were selected based on their ability to solve employee needs, cost to manufacture and time to make.
1. McLaren Applied tech & capability cards
Employee need:
"As an employee I have no idea what technology the company has, let alone what projects the team next to me is working on. People are always so busy and working in confidentiality zones."
Our goal:
To demystify McLaren Applied technology and help employees innovate feasible and inspiring ideas that amplify McLaren Applied's technical core and future vision.
Solution:
We delivered ten digital and physical workshop cards describing McLaren Applied core technology and capability. The aim was for them to inspire ideas and give employees confidence in their idea by using approved ideation tools. The feedback obtained was that these cards were improving the quality and quantity of proposition being incubated and developed into product pipelines and R&D.
Overview of McLaren Applied tech & capability cards
Flick through a workshop card
2. Personalised intranet functionality
Employee need:
"I want to keep updated with MAT news, events, updates but I am overloaded with irrelevant information in my email inbox and can’t dip in and out easily"
Our goal:
To better connect employees with news about the company, its vision, new projects, personal development opportunities, other employee achievements and networking events.
Solution:
We improved the intranet usability and functionality by providing personalisations, customisation and updating the look and feel. The goal was to help employees work effectively by reducing overloading from email content and feedback evaluates that we have done just that.
Overview of Personalised Intranet
Overview of Personalised Intranet
3. Intelligent profile search
Employee need:
"As an employee I want to connect and utilise the talent in MAT but it is difficult to know who the relevant people are especially as teams employee profiles aren’t up-to-date and you have to know the persons name you want to connect with."
Our goal:
To encourage innovation by connecting people with relevant skills, backgrounds and experiences to develop new approaches and ideas. Thereby eliminating the need to rely on others to connect you or know everyones name.
Solution:
An intelligent profile search tool that identifies employees based on their projects, expertise, areas of interest, capability etc. and filter via location, availability and recommendation (starring system).
Concept in development
04 Approach
Our discovery approach involved interviews with McLaren employees from across the business. We uncovered several barriers limiting company innovation, which were then used to drive ideas for new tools and service within McLaren Applied.
McLaren Applied directors approved the digital solutions, which were then defined, developed and integrated into our IT system.
We monitored employee feedback through objective analytics, using Google analytics + data scientist algorithms to analyse data. We also sent out subjective employee survey and questions.
©Melissa Butterworth 2022