INNOVATION
InnovatioN
Methods
Innovation Kickbox
170
Ideas submitted
28
Different countries
52
Kickboxes
5
Ideas funded
The Innovation Kickbox is an innovation process and toolkit for individuals & organizations to improve, accelerate & optimize their innovation effectiveness. It was first developed by Adobe and open-sourced at a later stage so everyone can use it.
Rhevo has used the Kickbox to start its Innovation Initiative with the goal to find innovative solutions to further digitize the Supply Chain of Rhenus. Since we firmly believe that our employees are the best source of innovation we encouraged them to submit their ideas. Within just a few weeks more than 170 ideas from 28 countries were collected. The best 52 were chosen to receive a Kickbox and run through a 12-week program to validate their ideas. The program was accompanied by Start Up Experts, Pitch Coaches & moderators who assisted the innovators along the way.
5 ideas currently receive further funding and are being developed. They range from topics like Corporate Social Responsibility, Instant Quotation and Predictive Analytics.
One of these ideas is the CO2 reduction program RHEGREEN for air freight - the first of its kind - which has launched just recently.
Design Sprints
To put Design Thinking into an applicable framework, Rhevo uses Design Sprints. This method has been popularized by Jake Knapp by Google Ventures who looked for a way to ideate, prototype and test customer-centric ideas within just one week. It uses the Design Thinking approach & is typically put into five different steps:
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Map
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Sketch
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Decide
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Prototype
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Test
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With this method an interdisciplinary team of 6-8 people comes together for 4/5 days to go from a goal and first ideas to develop a prototype that can be tested for valuable customer feedback. What usually takes months, multiple meetings and a lot of furstration can be done within just one week.
Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a systematic approach to find creative solutions to complex problems. It puts the most important element in the center of thoughts - the user. The iterative process revolves around five or six steps:
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(Understand)
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Empathize
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Define
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Ideate
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Prototype
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Test
Innovation Network
We believe that many heads think better than one. That is why we are constantly enhancing our Innovation Network, internally and externally.
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Moreover, we are constantly screening the market for collaboration opportunities. We engage in cooperations with Start-Ups which helps us to make use of special areas of expertise. Rhenus is part of the NLA - the Next Logistcs Accelarator - which provides Start Ups with an ecosystem to grow, connect & expand.
We engage with universities eg. in specific student research projects to profit from academic expertise & engage with potential employees in the future. It helps us connect with young & bright minds and foster our knowledge exchange in regard to newest scientific research.
