The Prince's Trust

The background: prioritising innovation

The Prince’s Trust needed a way to channel the great ideas floating around in silos and prioritise innovation as a business objective.

During a time of organisational change, the team wanted to engage employees with the most real and relatable challenges, where the employees felt they could make the biggest impact

The Prince’s Trust established three key strategic objectives to support Nick’s mandate:

• To help one million young people over the next 10 years
• Give young people an increasing stake in our economy and society
• To become the best organisation

The solution: working together

With these objectives and Wazoku’s idea management platform, The Prince’s Trust fostered a culture where every idea can be heard and employees have the confidence and motivation to share their thoughts with each other.

The team branded the platform “Ideas Loop” and built an entire communications plan to introduce the new corporate strategy and new innovation strategy.

How the Prince’s Trust embed innovation as a core, strategic, everyday capability

The Prince’s Trust UK Chief Executive and senior stakeholders completely support and encourage everyone’s participation in innovation and sharing ideas on Ideas Loop. The innovation team worked with Wazoku’s customer success team to build, enhance and measure the success of their challenges and ideas.

The Prince’s Trust aims to empower and implement as many ideas as possible. One way this is done is through The Trust’s evaluation process – if the idea is under £1,000, the idea creator can take ownership and immediately implement it. If the idea will cost £1,000+, the idea will be reviewed by an innovation panel with a range of representatives from across the business.

TED talk-style videos, posters around the office, and updates on the intranet and within the internal newsletter all feature ideas, challenges and inspiration to drive innovation and keep it front of mind for everyone. The Prince’s Trust has cultivated more than 40 Innovation Champions within the business to inspire others and instil best practice.

“Innovation Booster Weeks” ensure innovation is a topic on every meeting agenda for that week, driving further adoption, engagement and celebrating its success.

Bi-Monthly Champion Talks could be coffee mornings or lunchbox talks to inspire and educate employees on being more innovative in everyday life. They give perspective on innovation, and share best practice and advice.

Advice for fellow innovators

• Ownership of Ideas: All The Prince’s Trust challenges on Ideas Loop have an owner with authority to make change and implement ideas. Without this, they wouldn’t see the same result.
• Make Feasible: Break down challenges or ideas into smaller projects with realistic timelines. Whether you seek incremental or disruptive change, innovation must be a smooth process to implement. The Wazoku platform’s customisable workflow helps drive ideas from generation to implementation.
• Always Be Learning: The Prince’s Trust hosts sessions on design thinking, runs hackathons and more to foster education around the innovation space.
• Generate Buzz: The Prince’s Trust has seen incredible uptake and immediate success with full adoption of Ideas Loop, thanks to embedding innovation as a core strategy. The communications plan around innovation and Ideas Loop keeps it an exciting initiative that employees enjoy and know they have the power to innovate.
• Celebrate Success: Whether celebrating its digital transformation or individual challenges and ideas, The Prince’s Trust knows every success is worth celebrating for increased engagement and further adoption of the innovative culture.