Picture this.

At 7AM, you click into a virtual meeting to greet your co-workers with a sleepy ‘good morning.’ The marathon of meetings continues, and by 5 PM, you feel like you’ve been on a treadmill without pause. Perhaps you take a break to pick up the kids or walk the dog, before you’re back online to finish up and make sure you grab that call with your colleagues several time zones away.

Sound familiar? Multiply that across the almost 800 days that we have been working from home and no wonder our workforce is spent mentally, emotionally and physically.

When people feel like they are in survival mode, how do we get them thinking and participating in what’s next? That’s a question that we wrestled with as an innovation team at Avanade. "A passion for technology and innovation with purpose” is integral to who we are, but the innovation workshops, make-a-thons and innovation contests of the past are ill-suited for virtual work and a fatigued workforce.

In response, we designed !nnovateFest to bring a jolt of energy and infusion of creativity into the day-to-day routine. Bite-sized, snackable doses of online content enable us to democratize innovation and invite people to expand their thinking and knowledge. Now in its third year, the 2022 !nnovateFest features:

• A highly curated curriculum built around a key theme “Creating the Future is in our Nature” which brings to life sustainability at the intersection of technology, strategy and innovation.
• A gamified app that uplevels employees across ecosystems like meadows, forests and coral reefs as a tie-in to sustainability.

  

• Looking to our people to plant the seeds of change. Throughout !nnovateFest, we’re crowdsourcing ideas that we can build into minimal lovable products. Our goal is to bring new ideas to market that reflect our people’s creativity and values.
• Translations of videos and activities to ensure we are inclusive and diverse in our innovation collaborations with our global employee footprint.
• Fun. With the friendly competition, the creative digital assets such as downloadable giphys, and interactive ways to reinforce learning...there’s a constant nod to creating a cohesive, engaging experience.

We have seen how well our workforce can challenge our clients as they prepare for tomorrow. It just so happens that with an increase in demand for progressing climate action across organizations, we know there’s a role to play that builds on our digital expertise, pragmatic advisory and innovation approach, and deep knowledge on the Microsoft ecosystem. So we are stepping up to help clients rethink their businesses.

!nnovateFest was recently recognized by i4cp as a Next Practice winner for cutting through the noise of business as usual and reinvigorating the passion that brings many people to Avanade to begin with.

We’ll know we get this right for our people when !nnovateFest becomes a welcome break in a marathon day rather than another task on the list. We’ll know we’re getting it right for our clients when we consistently deliver innovation that is creating sustainable and long-term value.