Launched at the end of January, Natixis’ first ideation challenge open to all its employees worldwide ended on last April 11 in Paris, where the ten finalist teams met. For three days, within the walls of COMET Meetings, Place des Victoires, the finalists refined their project before presenting it to a jury composed of members of the Senior Management Committee and of the Board of Directors of Natixis.

The challenge was designed to create projects that simplify Natixis internal processes, improve employees’ day-to-day working lives and increase agility.

At the end of the first stage of the call for ideas, 30 idea carriers were selected by a jury to develop their ideas in a collaborative way. For four weeks, the participants had to form their team and develop their project as much as possible with the help of internal stakeholders.

Ten teams were finally selected to take part in the final sprint in Paris. “A lot of ideas, a lot of collaborative work, collective intelligence and real business skills,” said François Riahi, CEO of Natixis, after listening to the pitches of the ten finalist teams.

The jury finally selected Approv’All as the winning project. The aim of the Approv’All solution is to simplify the validation process for managers with a single smartphone application, while improving the day-to-day employee experience for all.

Given the quality of the presented projects, the jury decided to highlight three other projects.
They awarded a “Coup de Coeur” prize to Talent Help, a solution allowing a manager to tackle a temporary work overload by mobilizing a Natixis employee from another department while giving the employee the opportunity to discover a new job.
They also decided to study further the opportunity of implementing the GrInbox (an Outlook add-in designed to reduce emails) and Kick Start Monday (a robot allowing to remotely open all your applications in the morning) projects.

Collaborative innovation does not stop there at Natixis!
Projects that have not been selected will be reviewed by the concerned entities in order to retain the relevant ideas that can help Natixis move forward.

Watch the video of François Riahi who looks back at the final sprint, a highlight in Natixis’ life: