The Danish company, Grundfos, a giant in the field of pumps, has re-thought its approach to developing talent and creating results through co-creation.

A global talent machine
A practical example of how Grundfos uses co-creation is their new talent programme.
”One of the major challenges that we constantly face at Grundfos is how to train and develop a staff of over 18,000 people in more than 50 countries. We have come a long way with training the broad mass of our employees, but on top of that we now also need to be world class at developing the very best of them, those with real talent. We badly need the best people because we have designed a very ambitious strategy with a vision that aims to develop radically innovative products and solutions”, explains Lisbet Thyge Frandsen.

To meet the challenge of designing a concept for developing talent that can be used all over the world, Grundfos has chosen to develop the concept as a co-creation project.

”We had to act quickly and it had to work all over the world. And because it will affect a very large number of people, I felt it important to develop a concept that that they all could relate to. So, to ensure that the concept had local roots and was culturally broad in scope, we gathered a group of 40 managers and specialists from 23 countries who were all passionately interested in the task and prominent in terms of forming public opinion in their local environment. This was a very diverse group and they were given four days to design a new concept for talent development”, adds Lisbet Thyge Frandsen.

Diversity sparks off creativity
The fact that we involved so many different people in the process has led to an increased level of innovation and a fantastic sense of ownership. Lisbet Thyge Frandsen stresses that this can only be achieved if people dare to challenge both themselves and others: ”It’s very tough and demanding. There can be lots of disagreement, so if you’re leading the process you have to let go of the reins. In the end, it’s a question of daring to renounce some of one’s own power”, she says.

Lisbet Thyge Frandsen sees it as a clear global tendency that companies increasingly involve specialists. Another tendency is that barriers between companies are being broken down and an increasing number of so-called free agents are appearing on the scene. These tendencies are reflected at Grundfos.

”At the moment here at Grundfos we are trying to build up the skills needed to design innovative products and solutions by calling on designers, anthropologists, engineers and economic experts. The idea is that they each use their special professional skills to help map out the needs of the market in cooperation with future users. I see innovation as combining things in new ways, which means involving people with radically different approaches”, concludes Lisbet Thyge Frandsen.

/ link

About Lisbet Thyge Frandsen