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Our 8th annual Innovation Days brought together some of our company’s finest minds once more – across 13 workshops, presentations and demonstrations and with 125 attendees, it showed that the spirit of innovation at B.I.G. is more alive than ever.
“Innovation” has to have true meaning for it to move a company (and the world!) forward. So, we spent some time with Pol Deturck, our CEO, Pieter Lelieur, CHRO, Pol Lombaert, Group Innovation Director, as well as Wouter Neirynck, Digital Transformation Director.
“Innovation within B.I.G. rests on three key factors driven by strategic choices: people, sustainability and technology,” says Pol Lombaert, Group Innovation Director, “They continuously influence and enable each other.”
“For people to innovate,” notes Pieter Lelieur, “it’s important they have the opportunities to do so. We offer them tools to learn and to grow within the company.” This includes the Beaulieu University project, as well as employees who frequently work outside their home divisions and fields to learn from one another.
You’ll never innovate alone
“It’s a misconception that innovation solely comes from engineers or from one brilliant individual,” Pol Deturck says, “most of the time innovation means collaboration. You can innovate alone but it is much more fun and effective to do it together. Second, teams anywhere in the organization, certainly those on the factory floor, can be an important source of innovation. Third, innovation is about so much more than product, we should include Supply Chain, HR, Business Model etc. It all starts with the right people and the right mindset.”
B.I.G. prizes entrepreneurship as well as intrapreneurship, a fancy term for taking initiatives within the company. “We want to stimulate this by sharpening our employees’ curiosity. Curiosity leads to a broader horizon, and a broader horizon is a key aspect of an innovative mindset,” notes Pol. This innovative mindset is not optional: “While I’m very proud of what B.I.G. has achieved in the past decades, it’s time for us, as a collective, to take the next steps that help us tackle today’s big challenges. Megatrends of our time, such as sustainability, digitalization, urbanization and inequality require innovative approaches from companies, and we must play our part.”
The ground floor of innovation
For instance, sustainability is a key differentiator. “Partners and end consumers want to feel at ease when they choose for us. Are our flooring solutions sustainably sourced? What happens to our products after its lifecycle ends? Was it made locally or shipped in from halfway across the world, where labor circumstances may be far from ideal?” adds Pol.
The digitalization front is just as important, and the right digital solutions can in turn enable innovation. Wouter Neirynck, Digital Transformation Director, says: “We can’t underestimate the contribution of digitalization to innovation. Here at B.I.G., we have identified seven key avenues where digital transformation plays the role of enabler. I would like to highlight three of these domains within the context of innovation.”
Moving towards Industry 4.0.
“The first is creating the right tools to optimize production processes. This is a key step on the long road to Industry 4.0,” says Wouter. Industry 4.0. is the end result of increased automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine communication (M2M) in manufacturing and production.
“The second avenue is enabling new business models with digital tools that support circular economy solutions,” adds Wouter, “and the third is an expansion of our digital printing capabilities, which helps designers and factory staff alike to get ever more creative in what they produce and how we bring it to the market.”
Do you want in on innovation?
“B.I.G.’s 8th annual Innovation Days concluded on October 29, but they are just a new starting point for the next year in innovation,” notes Pol Lombaert.
“Is that something that you find inspiring? Then why not explore job opportunities at B.I.G.? As a worldwide company, we have job openings all over the globe, and we are always looking for curious, spirited new colleagues who enjoy taking on the big challenges. Step on in.” says Pieter Lelieur.
