“In a world motivated by self-interest, we choose collaboration. This is how we contribute to the future of our communities, companies, and planet.” This is the rallying cry of CBTW, a consultancy that delivers innovation technology solutions to companies around the world.
With 3,000 employees across 21 countries, CBTW understands that collaboration is key to developing solutions that meet the evolving needs of its customers. CBTW stands for “Collaboration Betters The World,” and this belief is central to the company’s identity. It continuously seeks new ways to improve collaboration to deliver better and more innovative outcomes for its clients.
As a consultancy and solution provider, one of the primary objectives at CBTW is ensuring that they offer the most innovative and effective solutions possible to the diverse challenges faced by their clients. In this article, we will explore how CBTW leveraged Qmarkets’ Q-ideate software to support their innovation efforts in new solution development. While new product development is a common use case for many innovation programs, CBTW applied similar methodologies to create and manage a growing knowledge-base of innovative solutions using the Qmarkets platform.
We’ll look into why CBTW selected Q-ideate and how the platform has become an essential part of their toolkit, serving a dual purpose for knowledge management and idea management. We’ll also discover how and why CBTW became “Qmarkets evangelists” when they added Q-ideate itself to the company’s solutions portfolio.
CBTW’s Challenges: What Needed to Change?
Shortly after stepping into his role as innovation leader in 2022, Olivier Della Maggiore and his team, first identified three core problems associated with CBTW’s existing tools and processes that would need to be solved to achieve better innovation outcomes. Like many companies, CBTW’s main challenge was that different parts of the business were operating in silos. Teams were generating ideas independently, leading to ‘isolated solutions’ and missing valuable opportunities for cross-departmental knowledge-sharing and collaboration.
The fragmented nature of CBTW’s innovation activities was compounded by the absence of cohesive tools. With teams using local SharePoints or various platforms like MS Teams or Miro to drive their own individual innovation processes, CBTW were unable to link these disparate activities to the company’s solution portfolio or run organized campaigns at a company level.
The third challenge was resource allocation. Without a single source of truth for the company’s innovation pipeline and a lack of transparency between teams, innovation projects were often inefficient, delayed, and would often grind to a halt. It was clear that what CBTW needed was an innovation process that broke down these walls and helped everyone to pull in the same direction…and a single platform that could manage this process from end-to-end.
CBTW’s Roadmap for Finding the Best Solution for their Requirements
Before trying to define the company’s new innovation process, let alone identify a new platform, Olivier recognized that CBTW needed to define what innovation meant to them and earn company-wide consensus and buy-in for what he was trying to build. Together with CBTW’s innovation advisor Benoît Van Thienen, they gathered a team to form the company’s Innovation Forum.
The forum’s first mission was to produce a whitepaper which would define innovation from CBTW’s perspective and make the case for proposed innovation processes going forward. Once this Innovation Manifesto had been distributed across the business and everyone had bought into the vision, Olivier and his team fleshed out their innovation process, identified their goals, and drew up a comprehensive list of requirements for a new innovation platform, ranging from various functionalities and technological criteria to ease of use, costs, and compliance.
Knowing exactly what they wanted now, CBTW drew up a shortlist of vendors and ultimately chose Qmarkets’ idea management software Q-ideate based on four key differentiators:
Customization: Having painstakingly developed a new company-wide innovation process, it was vital that any tool would have the flexibility to facilitate that process exactly, and Q-ideate provided it.
Engagement: The tool’s gamification features such as points, badges and incentives to encourage participation would help CBTW to convert cross-departmental buy-in for the new platform into lasting engagement.
Evaluation: CBTW needed the capability to assess ideas effectively, and Q-ideate’s scorecards, token voting, and idea tournament features offered that ability.
Reporting: Part of the vision set out in the company’s Innovation Manifesto was diligent performance monitoring, of the movement of ideas through the workflow, time-to-market, engagement levels, and more. Q-ideate’s funnel visualization, and advanced reporting capabilities and dashboards therefore played an important part in CBTW’s decision.
Having zoned in on Q-ideate as their chosen solution, CBTW then worked extensively with Qmarkets’ customer success team to customize their new platform in accordance with their exact needs.
How CBTW Set Up and Launched the Platform
More specifically, the platform needed to be tailored to CBTW’s specific use case, which is to develop innovative new solutions for its clients. Whenever a request from a client comes in, CBTW’s sales team will review their solutions portfolio to check whether a solution already exists, whether it can be improved or reconfigured, or whether a new one needs to be developed. That initial check is now performed via the Q-ideate platform, and enhanced by our advanced search and similar idea recognition features.
If a new solution is required, they will enter the innovation funnel and move through CBTW’s customized workflow involving idea generation, triage, incubation, and delivery.
CBTW is effectively using Q-ideate as a dual-purpose system: first as a knowledge management tool that hosts the company’s solutions portfolio, and then as an idea management platform that springs into action when new solutions are needed.
Before launching the platform, CBTW ensured that all existing solutions and in-progress projects were uploaded to Q-ideate. This meant that when users logged in for the first time, they wouldn’t see an empty system but one already rich with ideas and projects at various stages of development. This helped illustrate the innovation journey from beginning to end, making the process feel more tangible. To ensure a smooth rollout, users were trained in small groups, helping them understand their role in the innovation process and appreciate the overall value of the tool.
The Role of Innovation Coaches
As CBTW developed its new innovation process, it became clear that implementing a tool alone wasn’t enough. Olivier Della Maggiore recognized that for the company’s innovation efforts to thrive long-term, there needed to be dedicated individuals actively driving the process forward. This led to the creation of a network of innovation coaches, a critical step in ensuring that the company’s innovation initiatives would be sustainable, collaborative, and effective.
The innovation coaches were appointed to lead and support the innovation process, ensuring that ideas flowed smoothly from initial concept through to execution. They work closely with CBTW’s Spark teams—cross-functional groups with diverse skill sets—to help turn ideas into tangible solutions. By offering guidance throughout the process, the coaches help refine ideas and ensure they align with the company’s broader objectives.
In addition to this hands-on role, the innovation coaches act as knowledge sharers, using their deep understanding of innovation methodologies to elevate the quality of ideas across teams. They serve as guardians of the innovation pipeline, making sure only the ideas that fit CBTW’s vision and strategy progress through the various stages. Furthermore, by fostering collaboration across departments, these coaches break down organizational silos, ensuring that knowledge, insights, and creative thinking are shared freely across the company.
This network of innovation coaches has proven essential to embedding innovation deeply within CBTW’s culture, ensuring that the process is efficient, aligned with business goals, and fueled by collaboration at every level.
Early Success and the Addition of Q-ideate to CBTW’s Solution Portfolio
One year on from the platform’s launch, ten marketable products have already transitioned from ideas to execution, spanning low code technology, AI, and data fabric. Given the relatively small scale of the platform’s audience, and CBTW’s unique application of Q-ideate, this is quite some feat.
According to CBTW, the platform has enabled short feedback cycles and continuous improvement of methods and processes, which has led to greater efficiency of projects and a vastly reduced time to market of new solutions for CBTW’s customers. CBTW also credits Q-ideate with deepening the company’s culture of innovation by increasing participation in the development of new solutions and democratizing idea generation and collaboration.
“Our approach provides a valuable blueprint for other organizations looking to harness the power of innovation management tools. Our journey underscores the importance of a clear innovation framework, the right tools, and dedicated people in driving successful innovation.”
CBTW
Perhaps the greatest testament to the success of CBTW’s implementation of Q-ideate is its addition to their portfolio of solutions for customers. Having experienced the benefits it brings to the innovation process at firsthand, CBTW decided to partner with Qmarkets to pass on those benefits to its customers by offering Q-ideate to customers in need of an idea management tool.
Looking Ahead
So what’s next? Olivier is pleased with the platform’s early results but he has plans to get even more out of it in the future. These include increasing the number of users across the business, generating even higher engagement levels through fresh tactics such as flash campaigns, and adding new integrations with tools like MS Teams and Salesforce to embed Q-ideate ever more seamlessly into the company’s way of working.
We’ve just laid the foundations for innovation at CBTW: a clear process, total visibility on current innovations, a catalog of market-ready products, all available on a unifying platform. In just a few months, CBTW has already undergone a considerable transformation. And in this transformation, the Qmarkets platform has played the role of glue between all the pieces. But this is only the first step. Now that all our solution creation initiatives are converging on Qmarkets, we can start to use the more advanced features to increase the pace and look at market impact using other Qmarkets products, notably Q-impact.
Olivier Della Maggiore – Innovation Leader, CBTW
CBTW’s story stands out to us for various reasons. One is the dual role that the Q-ideate platform plays as both knowledge management system and idea management tool, which means that the company’s existing solutions portfolio and its process for creating innovative new solutions all live in the same place.
The company’s methodical approach to identifying exactly what they wanted to achieve, and the platform capabilities they required to achieve it, serve as a valuable best practice for any other company looking to implement a new innovation platform.
The appointment of innovation coaches to sustain and drive the innovation process seems to have been a key factor in their success, ensuring that ideas flow seamlessly and teams stay aligned with the company’s vision. At Qmarkets, we see this as a prime example of the value of establishing a network of innovation ‘catalysts’—like CBTW’s innovation coaches—within companies to share knowledge and drive awareness and participation in innovation programs.
It’s been truly rewarding to witness CBTW embodying its core values of innovation through collaboration, and we at Qmarkets are proud to have supported them in this endeavor.
Are you interested in finding out more about Q-ideate and how it can enhance the innovation process at your organization? Head to our product page for more information, or click here to schedule your free demo.
