In September, we held our first World Café, an innovative approach designed to fuel thinking and creativity within companies.
While this type of more approach is more commonly used in technology companies, we decided to apply it to more conventional sectors, i.e. a para-municipal organization in search of new ideas from traditional industries. And to my pleasant surprise, it worked!
We invited manufacturing, life sciences and IT firms to get together to discuss four issues. To give you an idea of how you can get a discussion going, here are the questions that we asked:
- Do BRIC countries represent a threat or an opportunity? Why?
- According to your understanding of the global economy, how can companies succeed in the next two years?
- What support can the International Business Centre offer to help you increase your sales abroad?
- Would you like to benefit from the experience of other Laval firms active in the global market place?
The end result was that the companies involved liked the formula and enjoyed the discussion. For our part, we learned more about them so that we can now adapt our service offer to their changing reality.
So, if you’re looking to develop new ideas with your team and build closer ties with your customers and partners, I strongly recommend that you try this approach. In today’s economy, companies and organizations like ours have no choice but to re-invent themselves.
Lastly thank you to Pyxis for having shared this approach with us!
Véronique Proulx
